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: Passing the buck
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
Editor’s Take: Unwiring the world
A couple years ago I was out at the farm for a few days and my brother asked me to bid on something in an online auction sale for him. He had other commitments so he told me the lot number, what he was willing to pay, and wished me luck. I was going to
Editor’s Take: Living through history
Historic times are rarely comfortable times. Ask your ancestors who, in the first half of the last century alone lived through two world wars, one economic collapse, and a mega-drought. Or for that matter the millennials of today, who have so far survived one global financial crisis and a pandemic, with another economic crisis on
Editor’s Take: The last mile
Every year around the world, billions of dollars, euros, yen and yuan are spent on agriculture research. In Canada alone, public funding of “research in support of agriculture,” to quote the federal government, topped $557 million in the 2016-17 fiscal year. That figure may wax and wane with the budgetary vagaries of government, but it’s
Cyber-Savvy Farmer
