Anyone who’s spent time recently in voice-mail jail can confirm often it’s best to take one’s interaction with large organizations online. True, it’s probably just a cost-cutting measure and they’re pushing that cost onto you, the client. But it’s often also undeniably easier to take the self-serve option, where you do it yourself, at a
Editorial: Testing the limits of rural Internet
Editorial: Solution to canola dispute easier said than done
There’s been more than a little talk lately that the federal government needs to “get on a plane,” head to China and sort this canola situation out. That is an understandable sentiment with obvious appeal to human nature, which favours obvious action on pressing issues, the act of being seen to “do something.” But the
Editorial: A valuable question
The Irish writer and humorist Oscar Wilde once famously noted that a cynic is one who “… knows the price of everything, and the value of nothing.” Wilde wrote those words in the play “Lady Windemere’s Fan” more than 125 years ago, as a rebuttal to what he saw as the growing cynicism of the
Emerging opposition
An informal network of drainage advocates has formed in Manitoba
Stung by what they see as a lack of response and downright indifference from the province to the plight of local landowners, drainage advocates have begun to organize into an informal network across the province. In October 2017, a dozen of them sent a letter to Rochelle Squires, who then had just been appointed the
Drainage licensing in Manitoba: Policy or politics?
Landowners say some municipalities are bending the rules when it comes to water management and the provincial government is turning a blind eye. Concerns are boiling over into the courts as the province considers off-loading the responsibility for drainage licensing onto municipalities
Flood forecasts are as predictable as spring in Manitoba and the latest ones have Elm Creek-area landowner Pat Houde bracing for yet another showdown over water. He’s been fighting with the RM of Grey for years over drainage around his home and land he owns between Elm Creek and St. Claude. The blunt-talking Houde doesn’t
Editorial: Politics as usual
It’s tempting to ask the Chinese government to pull the other leg now. As anyone who grows canola is likely aware by now, Canada’s largest single customer for canola, accounting for 40 per cent of this country’s exports, threw a monkey wrench into Prairie export canola. Officials quietly banned imports from Richardson International, Canada’s largest
Editorial: About time
The world of Canadian agriculture made a couple of big strides in the field of gender parity this week. The Canadian Federation of Agriculture elected its first female president, Mary Robinson. While the name might be new to western Canadian members she’s well known in Atlantic Canada agriculture. She’s managing partner of a sixth-generation family
Editorial: Multi-tasking
Manitoba’s farmers can chalk up a small victory in their battle to have the way education taxes are levied on farmland revised. At the recent Keystone Agricultural Producers annual general meeting, held in early February in Winnipeg, the provincial government delivered the clearest signal to date that this message is getting through to policy-makers. Provincial
Too big to be true?
Can really large organic farms stay true to the spirit of the sector?
Travis Heide knows many look at One Organic Farms in Waldron, Saskatchewan and wonder if it’s really an organic farm. The question isn’t whether it technically qualifies — the farm meets all the required standards and ticks all the right boxes. It’s whether it hews to the spirit of organic farming, long known as a
Editorial: Seed royalty proposal no slam dunk
At first the discussion around seed royalties seemed largely a foregone conclusion. At question wasn’t if royalties would be collected on cereals crops to fund varietal research. Rather, the debate centred around how they’d be collected, with two models discussed under the supervision of the federal government. The options presented to farmers were a trailing
Cyber-Savvy Farmer
