For decades now, Canada’s supply management system has been under attack from both outside the country and within. Internationally it’s a perennial target in trade negotiations, and particularly the dairy industry. That sector, over the years, has endured the ‘death of a thousand cuts’ as every time Canada has inked a trade deal, it’s seen
Editor’s Take: Keep the baby
Editor’s Take: Electoral train wrecks
I was texting with a retired farmer acquaintance this week about the U.S. election while he was deer hunting in the sandhills of western Saskatchewan. Like a lot of Canadians, he wanted to follow the unfolding events, even though he wasn’t in a reliable cellphone service area. So I’d agreed to keep him filled in
Editor’s Take: As an organization, KAP offers farmers their best value
We all know a ‘good deal’ when we see one. It’s the reason the fast-food industry always asks us if we’d like to upsize our fries and drinks. It knows a few pennies more in costs, offset by a few nickels more in payments from us, makes us think we’ve got a great deal —
Editor’s Take: Passing the buck
At some point or other, most of us have received a non-vitation. That’s the ‘invitation’ to an event designed to assuage the guilt of the host while making it crystal clear at the same time we’d actually be as welcome as a red-headed stepchild. ‘Oh, hey Charlie. Yeah, that’s right, I’m having a little get-together
Editor’s Take: Time for an Agpec trade agreement?
It would seem times are about to get tough for ‘trading nations’ as Canada has styled itself for the past few decades. That designation makes sense, and in many ways is inevitable. After all, we’re talking about a land mass of nearly 10-million square kilometres, the second-largest country in the world. And on that enormous
Editor’s Take: The new normal of subsidies
Many would say Canada’s suite of agricultural business risk management programs is falling short of blunting the whipsaw of the markets. Now, it faces being further overwhelmed by non-market forces. That was the gist of a recent policy note issued by the Agri-Food Economic Systems think tank, authored by respected agricultural economists Al Mussell and
Editor’s Take: Precedents and partisanship
[UPDATED: Oct. 1, 2020] Manitoba’s Municipal Board has, for the first time, overruled an RM council decision regarding a development application. If the fact that a politically appointed board can override the decisions of a duly elected local council isn’t raising eyebrows, it should. We only have to look south at what has taken place
Editor’s Take: A provincial community
One thing that the COVID-19 pandemic has made abundantly clear is just how intertwined all Manitobans really are. In the complex ecosystem that is our province, it’s now clear less separates urban and rural residents than one might think at first glance. To understand this, one needs to look at how our second wave of
Editor’s Take: Pork sector inefficiently efficient
Has the drive for efficiency gone too far in the pork sector? For the past few decades the drive has been to vertical integration, closely matching production and processing capacity, and larger and more efficient (and far fewer) processing plants. In this MBA-driven world view, any excess surge capacity is viewed as an inefficiency to
Editor’s Take: COVID-19 a shared problem
There’s being good, and there’s being lucky. Sometimes it’s easy to confuse the two. That’s likely what was happening while Manitoba’s COVID case numbers failed to mount. With day-after-day reports of no cases, many seemed to conclude that while COVID was a problem, it wasn’t a Manitoba problem. That’s simply incorrect and it ignores how
Cyber-Savvy Farmer
