Are you ready for the Manitoba Crop Alliance vote? The MCA is the name a new merger of crops groups is poised to take on if their amalgamation proposal passes votes to be held at this winter’s CropConnect conference. That meeting, slated for February 11-13 in Winnipeg, will see the annual meetings of the Manitoba […] Read more
The company is now listening to consumers, not just customers, in an effort to grow
Maple Leaf Foods is not just pretending to be environmentally friendly, it is trying to be a trailblazer. The company has just adopted science-based targets that will help it become the first major agri-food company in the world to be carbon neutral. It’s so un-Canadian to be first, to set a world standard, especially in […] Read more
On June 11, 2009 Gary Doer was contemplating his pending exit from provincial politics, Barack Obama had less than six months under his belt as president of the United States and Stephen Harper was still nearly two years away from receiving his first majority mandate. In popular culture, Jason Aldean’s “Big Green Tractor” was burning […] Read more
A lot of farmland is expected to change hands in the coming years
If government and private estimates are accurate, hundreds of millions of North American farm acres will have new owners in the next 15 years. For example, the National Agricultural Statistics Service, the Department of Agriculture’s (USDA) survey takers and record keepers, predicts that 100 million acres of today’s farmland will be sold by its current […] Read more
One thing the designers of farm programs at the governmental level can’t seem to wrap their heads around is the myriad of ways things can go wrong out in the countryside. They like to slot things into neat boxes and sketch out a few likely scenarios, and design the programs around them and call it […] Read more
Ron DePauw wouldn’t get a second look from most Canadians. But his worth to the country is measured in the billions, yes, with a “B.” Born in rural Saskatchewan and raised on a Treherne-area farm, the now-retired DePauw is one of the most prolific wheat breeders in the world. He was involved in the research […] Read more
A few weeks before the election, I was having a coffee in Ottawa with someone who advocates for a growers’ group. She apologized for coming solo, telling me the person who was supposed to join her couldn’t make it. That was because her colleague had flown to Regina for a meeting with Ralph Goodale. It […] Read more
To say Thanksgiving weekend was a wake-up call for those of us living in rural Manitoba would be an understatement. The mid-October snowstorm that swept through the south-central zone between Brandon and Winnipeg is one for the memory books, ranking right up there with the Colorado low that shut down the region in March of […] Read more
In 1932 my grandfather moved north from the drought-stricken plains of southern Saskatchewan, to the province’s parkland region. Chasing rain and a better life, he first homesteaded a rocky quarter, turned it back in and the next year bought an irregularly shaped piece of property, totalling 204 acres, bounded by two creeks, from the Hudson […] Read more
In the early-morning fog the other day, I heard a claw hammer’s tap, tap, bam, bam, bam, boom drive a nail into its place for who knows how many years. A moment later, another six, clear, sharp notes cut through the fog and another nail was set for, maybe, a century or more. There were […] Read more
