Where does one individual’s rights end, and another’s begin? One famous definition runs like this: “The right to swing my arms in any direction ends where your nose begins.” It’s a straightforward common-sense approach that attempts to balance individual liberty with the rights of others. However, it’s also a very simplistic black-or-white view. The reality
Editorial: A fine balance
Editorial: Brand name
As the writing began to appear on the wall for the Canadian Wheat Board, many wondered what would become of Brand Canada. The nation has long enjoyed a global reputation as a producer of high-quality milling wheat. Canada has been a dominant player in this lofty quality grouping since the legendary Red Fife and Marquis
Editorial: Back to normal
A farmer who’s been around the block can’t be blamed for watching the current economic and political situation with growing nervousness. Anyone who was associated with a Prairie farm during the 1980s and ’90s has no choice but to remember those painful lost years, especially in the crops sector. Income dried up, losses mounted and
Editorial: Wild things roaming
A few years back, an acquaintance returned to school at mid-career and studied natural resource management. He was lucky enough to land a job with the province that first summer, checking boats at a stop on the Trans-Canada Highway at the Manitoba-Ontario border, to prevent the spread of zebra mussels. I mentioned that this sounded
Editorial: Winds of war
Are we staring down the barrel of another agriculture trade war? That’s the multibillion-dollar question that should be keeping the Manitoba agriculture sector up at night. After all, there are few that are more trade dependent. Manitoba is an export juggernaut. A few numbers from Statistics Canada help set the stage. In 2017 Manitoba sent
Editorial: Hands up!
As someone who just turned 50 this past winter, I have no personal memories of the Great Grain Robbery of the summer of 1972, only what I’ve heard and read. The tongue-in-cheek name references the Great Train Robbery nine years earlier, when a Royal Mail train from Glasgow to London was relieved of 2.6 million
Editorial: Playing the long game
Some canola growers are clearly getting frustrated by what they perceive as inaction on the part of the federal government. As our Allan Dawson reports from the front page of our May 9 issue, some are saying the government of the day hasn’t done enough, or indeed, even anything. Why, they wonder, hasn’t there been
Editorial: Keep calm, farm on
Every year, as seeding begins to ramp up, there’s no shortage of uncertainty. One can hope for the best, plan for the worst, and still find themselves in the weeds as an unexpected event or uncontrollable variable comes home to roost. Yet that never seems to stop the farmers of Manitoba, or even give them
Editorial: Back to the future?
Trying to predict the future with any accuracy is a fool’s errand, but that doesn’t stop plenty from trying. One of the biggest fallacies people fall into is the ‘recency effect,’ when the events of the near past are assumed to be more important than earlier events. Informally, it’s become shorthand for the assumption that
Editorial: Human nature
It’s one of those philosophical questions — can there really be too much of a good thing? In the case of glyphosate it would seem the answer might be yes, especially when it comes to crop residues. There’s little doubt why so much of the product is used here in Western Canada. It’s nothing short
Cyber-Savvy Farmer
