Stories from our other publications
Not just anyone should be able to jump behind the wheel of a semi-trailer and go rolling along a public road. After all, these rigs can carry staggering amounts of weight — for example, a Super-B can carry 42 tonnes of grain in a single load. To put that into perspective, it’s the equivalent of […] Read more
High-tech agriculture has been hogging all the attention lately. Mainstream media run stories starting with “It isn’t Old Macdonald’s farm anymore,” describing drones, satellites and tractor cabs fitted with computer screens. Farm media regularly feature stories on the latest precision agriculture innovations and how farmers can figure out how to use all that computer data […] Read more
Canada's dairy farmers getting a bad image
Conservative Party Leader Andrew Scheer was back in the headlines recently after a visit to an agricultural fair in Ste. Hyacinthe, Quebec, clearly intended to brand himself as a friend of Canada’s dairy farmers. This friendship may not be helpful. Scheer’s visit follows his widely reported comments to a Dairy Farmers of Canada meeting in […] Read more
Farm labour, or rather the shortage of it, is getting much attention lately. In recent weeks, there’s been a pilot program announced to provide temporary foreign workers (TFWs) with a path to permanent residency. There’s also been a study that suggests farms are going high tech, automating and mechanizing at an even faster rate — […] Read more
Canadian farm organizations have been making the case for better business risk management programs, and with margins getting tighter, they may be justified. But farm leaders should ask for the right reasons, and they shouldn’t include market access problems or being caught in a trade war, especially when export demand has never been better. Hardly […] Read more
An old friend lives in Winnipeg along a major thoroughfare that’s slated for expansion at some yet-to-be-determined future date. He and his wife have lived there for nearly 20 years, and the word of the planned roadwork came down shortly after they bought the house. They’ve been told, in no uncertain terms, that once the […] Read more
Divisive and self-righteous tactics could easily backfire at a crucial moment
Vegan groups are using billboards these days in the Atlantic region to denounce dairy farming practices, and telling consumers that dairy is scary. Some of these ads show a picture of a young calf, saying that someone “took its mom, its milk, then its life.” All this is to encourage people to switch to a […] Read more
While the Canadian Prairies are dry, the U.S. is struggling with very wet conditions
For many of us, certain years are permanently imprinted in the brain: 1983, 1993, 1995. While rainfall is generally welcomed, there are those years when one wishes that it would just hold off long enough to get the crop in the ground. Surely 2019 is destined to join that company. Worse than that, it looks […] Read more
When you’ve been in the ag journalism game for almost 40 years, few things surprise you. And, yet, on June 21, the Washington Post published a farm-based story that made even this greybeard marvel at how tone deaf and superior sounding rural politics has become. Even more startling was the reader reaction to that growing […] Read more
Canada’s major grain companies — through their industry voice the Western Grain Elevator Association (WGEA) — have come out swinging against a discussion paper that puts analytical testing on the table (see Allan Dawson’s front-page story). The Canadian Grain Commission has been reviewing whether falling number and tests for the mycotoxin deoxynivalenol (DON) would serve […] Read more
