Amidst all the disruption, the suffering and the fear, the one good thing you could say about our ongoing experience with COVID-19 is that it has peeled back the layers of our society to expose the raw — and sometimes unpleasant — truths about what we truly value. When childcare workers can earn more income
Editorial: Students and the farm labour crisis
Editorial: Meat packing concentration leads to problems
When Canadians flocked to their grocery stores to stock up for the pandemic lockdown, most weren’t filling their carts with plant-based proteins. It was the meat counters that cleared out along with the toilet paper shelves, baking ingredients, and with other basics considered necessities. While more Canadians have been experimenting with these plant-based proteins, most
New Zealand family farm
Faces of Ag: The only thing steeper than the hills on this South Island farm is the cost of buying them
Tim Anderson’s description of his farm as a “hill-country farm with a wee bit of flat,” doesn’t do justice to the breathtaking views and roller-coaster thrills of driving through his paddocks. Anderson and his wife Sue raise sheep, cattle, honey and trees on their 922-ha spread located about two hours north of Christchurch on New
Editorial: Farmers should tread carefully when seeking more aid
There is one stabilizing force for agriculture amidst all the uncertainties as the effects of pandemic management ripple through the food chain like an electrical shock to everything it touches. The recently released Farm Credit Canada report on land values, based on 2019 transactions, shows the value of farmland in Canada continues to rise, albeit
Editorial: COVID-19 is changing the conversation around food
On one hand, the federal government stated the obvious when it identified the food system as one of the 10 critical infrastructures supporting Canadians during the pandemic crisis. After all, who can survive without food? Nevertheless, the guidance document issued by Public Safety and Emergency Preparedness Minister Bill Blair recently sent an important signal, one
Editorial: Feeding a hungry world? Yes, but…
A senior executive of the largest social research company in the world is cutting a wide swath through the rhetoric pushing farmers to keep ramping up production to feed a hungry world. “It’s all nonsense,” Darrell Bricker told the farmers attending CropConnect 2020 in Winnipeg. The CEO of IPSOS public affairs has written two books
Editor’s Take: Food as a weapon
It’s hard to imagine how the heartbreaking loss of lives in a jetliner crash could translate into a bacon boycott, but welcome to the wild and wacky world of food politics. The reaction when Michael McCain, the CEO of Maple Leaf Foods, took to Twitter to say what a lot of Canadians were feeling after
Editorial: Corporate interest makes sustainability in agriculture tangible
It didn’t take long for a young cattle rancher from Saskatchewan to capture the audience’s attention at the Canada 2020 National Forum on Agri-Food in Ottawa earlier this month. “For me, the word ‘sustainability’ is synonymous with McDonald’s,” said Adrienne Ivey, who is part of a family corporation managing 3,000 beef cattle on a 10,000-acre
Scaling up precision decision-making could shrink Prairie fields
Equipment designed for large uniform fields is poorly suited to variable-rate applications to zones within a field
When Terry Aberhart scans the Prairie horizon for ways precision technology can make his family’s Saskatchewan farm more profitable, he sees something big and cumbersome blocking his view. “One of the biggest challenges we have is the size of our equipment,” the award-winning agronomy coach and founder of the consulting firm Sure Growth Technologies said.
Editorial: What if those weather forecasts are right?
To say Thanksgiving weekend was a wake-up call for those of us living in rural Manitoba would be an understatement. The mid-October snowstorm that swept through the south-central zone between Brandon and Winnipeg is one for the memory books, ranking right up there with the Colorado low that shut down the region in March of
Cyber-Savvy Farmer
