Just as there’s good stress and bad stress, there’s good excitement and bad excitement. There’s the good excitement you get when watching the Grey Cup, especially if you’re a Riders fan. Then there’s the other kind of excitement (as in riled up) you got watching this year’s Grey Cup commercials about how the Harper Government
Morriss: Cell companies bad, railways good?
Editorial: Getting the beef industry to communicate
Some of us used to think that the grain business was rife with too much politics, but as you learn more about the beef cattle business you start to wonder if it’s even worse. The debate over the wheat board consumed many gallons of ink in these pages over the years, not to mention the
Please, let’s not win again
Traceability is a fact of life for almost every other commodity that consumers buy; yet somehow we have not embraced traceability’s potential in the world of food. I cannot buy an iPhone that does not have complete traceability back to its basic components; yet what we put into our bodies is rarely traceable to source.
Fighting more deserts
When I went to the barber in Swift Current in the summer of 1937 to get a haircut and shave, he said the haircut was OK but he had quit shaving people. I asked “how come” and he said he couldn’t keep an edge on the razor anymore. With the terrible dust and the shortage
High standards, or regulatory burden?
If you are one of those grain farmers who takes great pride in being a free enterpriser, the next sentence may upset you. You are a member of a collective. Perhaps you don’t have a certificate certifying your involvement in such a pinko outfit, but unless you sell all your grain to one customer who
Colourful, but effective
Both Alex Binkley and Allan Dawson relate some memories of the accomplishments of the late Eugene Whelan elsewhere in this issue, but we can’t let him leave us without noting one ambition he failed to achieve. Whelan desperately wanted to be minister responsible for the Canadian Wheat Board (never making a secret of it) but
More New Year ad-verse-ity
Yes, that time again, it’s become a tradition To editorialize in verse in the year’s first edition We review the year past, then with great perspicacity Predict the next year’s events with remarkable accuracy Well, most of the time, because I have to confess That the advice I gave last year was not quite the
November 11 — Remembering more than sacrifice
This spring I visited Gorizia, which today is in Italy but was formerly part of the Austro-Hungarian empire, where the First World War began, and which collapsed afterward. In Canada we more often hear of the battles on the Western Front and perhaps forget that those on the Eastern Front were equally horrific. Gorizia has
Trees are just too boring
It was 12 years ago now, back when civil servants could still express an opinion without having their comments vetted through the prime minister’s office. The government of the time, through some now-forgotten body called the Canadian Agri-Food Marketing Council, had for some reason decided that Canada needed to set a goal of increasing Canada’s
Time to think about PR
Perhaps one shouldn’t tempt fate by talking about a crop that isn’t in the bin yet. It won’t be a bumper for everyone, and let’s not forget those still struggling with the aftermath of last year’s flood, or those on the wrong side of the feed grain price equation. That said, there are some eye-popping
Cyber-Savvy Farmer
