A farm kid from Germany, Sweden or Switzerland might be the answer to your labour needs, but it’s neither simple, nor straightforward to bring one into Canada to work on your farm. A panel discussion at Manitoba Ag Days highlighted some of the experiences farmers and immigration consultants have had accessing international labour. Chris Raupers
International ag interns no worker panacea
Bringing in experienced workers has pluses and minuses as a labour strategy
Editor’s Take: It’s a workers’ market out there
I want to buy some wheat. Hard red spring. I’m willing to pay $7 a bushel. Wait, you mean to tell me it’s worth $11.74 a bushel these days, according to the latest figures from the province? But I can’t afford that! It’s more than I want to pay! I’ll never turn a profit at
Editor’s Take: It’s about time
As a transplanted Saskatchewanian – now with a Manitoba tenure longer than my time in the ‘old country’ – I’ve adapted. I even cheer for the Bombers now, rather than the Riders. But there’s one difference I’ve never embraced. That’s the spring-forward, fall-back nonsense that is the twice-annual time change. I’ve always agreed with the
Editor’s Take: Many tools
Everything changed for agriculture after the Second World War. As the world went to war, the sector was largely driven by horsepower. By war’s end, it was poised for rapid mechanization and the Green Revolution. which brought about increased use of fertilizer and herbicides, all products of wartime research efforts. The widespread use of nitrogen
Editor’s Take: Stuck in the middle
As Canadian citizens, one of the phrases we should fear most in our language is “shared jurisdiction.” That’s the weird governance ‘no man’s land’ stuck between the federal and provincial government, where both are technically responsible for an issue and neither is likely to step up. It’s a poor dynamic, one that sets the stage
Editor’s Take: Time to get serious about rebuilding cattle sector
Several years ago Ralph Eichler, then the newly-minted provincial agriculture minister in the early days of the Pallister government, staked out a goal. He said he wanted to see the province’s beef herd rebuilt to its pre-BSE high water mark. Before that economic disaster hit the sector, Manitoba had been home to about 750,000 beef
Editor’s Take: The Great Grain Robbery II
I suppose theft of grain has always been part of war. Armies have always foraged for food, and victors have frequently carried away these spoils of war. One defence tactic has been to go ‘scorched earth’ and burn crops while retreating. But if grain has always been a tool of war, the criminal syndicate disguised
Editor’s Take: A five-year plan that works
During the Soviet era, a perpetual source of amusement was watching the planned economies announce one “Five-year plan” after another, with lofty goals to boost steel production, grow more wheat and so forth. It was always worth a chuckle because they’d inevitably have just failed to reach the goals of the last five-year plan, yet
Editor’s Take: End of an epoch
The world has lost two great leaders in recent days. First came news from Moscow of the death of Mikhail Gorbachev, the last general secretary of the Union of Soviet Socialist Republics. Russian President Vladimir Putin’s recent bad behaviour aside, it’s difficult some days to remember just how close the geopolitical bomb he defused was
Editor’s Take: Simmer down
It’s time for everyone to step back, take a deep breath, and tone down the rhetoric around the issue of fertilizer emissions. Because right now it’s being over-politicized, under-scrutinized and devoid of any rational examination. Here’s what we know so far. The federal government wants to see farmers reduce emissions from fertilizer by 30 per
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