There are few things more refreshing on a hot summer’s day than a tall glass of cold buttermilk. It has a bracing sourness that challenges the senses, but with none of the bitter aftertaste of milk that has gone off before its due date. It is in this category we place the recent efforts of
The buttermilk of the issue
Being right can feel wrong
There are times in life when you like to be proven wrong, like when you take your wailing newborn to the hospital emergency ward in the middle of the night fearing something is terribly amiss. In that situation, it’s a huge relief to be told you are mistaken. And there are times when any pleasure
Waste not, want not
Every year we hear the stories — the farmer who lost a bin full of canola to spoilage, or the one who lost his sunflowers — and the bin — after the crop overheated and caught fire. Or the farmer who opened his grain bag to find an infested, rotting mess after birds or rodents
Checkoff system needs to be credible
It is laudable that the federal government has moved to set up an interim checkoff to support research, market development and technical assistance for the grain sector. The Western Grain Research Foundation (WGRF), the Canadian International Grains Institute (Cigi) and the Canadian Malting Barley Technical Centre (CMBTC) are major assets to the western grain industry
Telling your story
Cultures in which it is customary to eat pretty much everything but the moo from meat animals must be scratching their heads over North America’s squeamishness over so-called “pink slime” beef. Lean finely textured beef, as the industry calls it, has never been sold in Canada. Health Canada considers the ammonia treatment the product undergoes
People make the quality
It had been a long day for the 35 people working for the Canadian International Grains Institute, and it was far from over. But as the last tour of the day made its rounds at the open house celebrating the institute’s 40th anniversary, there was nothing to indicate that the presenters had done this many,
Head baker makes sure the slice is right
Tony Tweed knew about the unique quality of Canadian bread wheats long before he was recruited to Canada in the mid-1960s to establish its first commercial baking school at the Northern Alberta Institute of Technology in Edmonton. “I worked with a lot of Canadian wheat flour in England,” the British-born and -trained baker said. “Everybody
The statistical portrait
So the federal government wants to get out of community pasture management and producing shelterbelt trees. Fair enough. There’s nothing saying those pastures can’t continue under local management or that trees can’t be produced by private nurseries. Manitoba already has two locally managed community pastures, which appear to be functioning well. And judging from the
The challenge of civility
Awareness days, weeks and months are a rapidly growing phenomenon in the modern world, a bid by groups with a special interest to flag down our fast-moving society for just a few moments to consider their cause. They can be altruistic, as in World Food Day, observed by the UN’s Food and Agriculture Organization every
Travel, trade and local markets
It was no surprise to learn last week that our federal minister of agriculture has racked up $271,000 in travel expenses since March 2011, the most of anyone in the federal cabinet. But unlike some of his colleagues, whose expense accounts have raised eyebrows among Canadians and howls of protest from opposition critics, we expect