Just weeks after the last provincial election campaign wrapped up, it might seem too soon to talk about the next one. But in the context of discontent in Manitoba’s farm country, it’s a topic worth considering. The governing Progressive Conservatives benefited, as they typically do, from strong support in rural Manitoba. In fact, agro-Manitoba voted
Editor’s Take: Ignoring the rural electoral base
Editor’s Take: Crime waves
One day, while working in downtown Winnipeg, I left my job for a dentist appointment just a few blocks away. In a rush to get there on time, I cut through a parking lot and was headed down a short alley to the next street. I was just walking along, minding my own business, when
Editor’s Take: Farmers need better financial supports
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
Editor’s Take: Seed royalties just one option
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
Editor’s Take: Picking food fights
Milk, in particular Canada’s supply management system, has always been a preoccupation of our southern neighbours. If you want to make someone in the U.S. agriculture sector go apoplectic in short order, just bring up the subject. To quote the current occupant of the White House in a tweet launched in the midst of USMCA
Editor’s Take: Should the province sell its agricultural lands?
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
Editor’s Take: A camera in every (barn) corner
Sir Paul McCartney, of pop music fame, once famously observed, “If slaughterhouses had glass walls, everyone would be vegetarian.” Built into this statement is the assumption that most people are too squeamish to look what they eat in the eye, and there is a grain of truth there. Most people prefer to only meet their
Editor’s Take: Is fake meat just a flash in the pan?
How much real interest is there in fake meat? By that I mean not the sort of interest you see in the equity markets where share prices have been driven through the roof because some investor doesn’t want to miss the next Microsoft or Amazon. Or the latest media hype, of which there’s been no
Editor’s Take: Manitoba farmers falling through the cracks
The past couple of months have been frustrating ones for the staff of this publication. For us in the agriculture sector the election was particularly ill-timed as it encompassed much of a particularly challenging growing season. We’ve run into more than a few examples of gun-shy provincial civil servants, who have been extremely reluctant to
Editor’s Take: Yellow dogs
Forty-seven years. Under a plan put forward by the Progressive Conservatives in the waning days of the provincial election, that’s how long it will have taken farmers to get a fairer education tax system. It was a foundational issue in 1984 when the province’s general farm organization, the Keystone Agricultural Producers, came into being. To
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