Just as Bayer was rolling out a new plan in mid-February to settle once and for all thousands of lawsuits claiming the active ingredient in Roundup causes cancer, United States President Donald Trump was declaring the product critical to the nation’s food security.

These are just the latest twists in a plotline that has embroiled regulatory agencies in controversy, and which has now jumped out of courtrooms and the quarterly investor reports to the highest political level.

Bayer shares jumped and then slumped as the market debated whether the company’s proposed US$7.25 billion settlement plan would end the legal nightmare it inherited with its purchase of Monsanto in 2018. It has reportedly already paid out more than $10 billion to settle claims glyphosate exposure is connected to non-Hodgkin’s lymphoma.

It’s a costly remedy to a problem Bayer says shouldn’t exist. Of the cases that have gone to trial, the company has won more than it has lost, but it’s desperate to cap its exposure.

Bayer has warned that if it can’t find a way out of the legal morass, it will have no option but to quit making and selling glyphosate. That would leave it to generic manufacturers — mostly located in China — to supply the North American market.

However, Trump invoked the Defense Production Act to ensure domestic production of glyphosate and phosphorus, deeming them critical to national and food security.

The move angered the Make America Healthy Again (MAHA) movement that has heavily influenced the current Secretary of Health Robert F. Kennedy’s approach to food regulation and nutritional guidelines. And it forced him to choose between his own track record of condemning the herbicide and his loyalty to Trump. He chose Trump — which is making MAHA even madder.

The Supreme Court of the United States is also expected to weigh in this year on a critical legal question underpinning the outstanding legal claims, which are based on the premise that Roundup’s product labels failed to warn users that glyphosate may cause cancer.

However, the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency (as has Health Canada) has consistently ruled that the herbicide is not a carcinogen, and it has approved the Roundup label without such a warning.

Bayer’s position is that federal labelling laws pre-empt the failure-to-warn claims made under state laws. If a product doesn’t cause cancer, how can the company put a warning on the label saying it does?

Adding more confusion to the hullabaloo, the scientific journal Regulatory and Toxicology Pharmacology, one of the leading peer-reviewed resources on product safety, announced late last year that it was taking the rare step of retracting a 25-year-old study “widely regarded as the hallmark paper” used by regulators to conclude glyphosate is safe.

The journal’s editor said in a statement that three academics whose names appear on the study “Safety Evaluation and Risk Assessment of the Herbicide Roundup and Its Active Ingredient, Glyphosate, for Humans” cherry-picked the data, they may have accepted payments from Monsanto, and had help from Monsanto writing the report.

This disclosure in no way proves that glyphosate poses undue risk to human health. However, it makes it harder to support claims that it is unequivocally safe, and it further erodes public trust.

Canada’s own Pest Management Regulatory Agency had one of its approvals for products containing glyphosate thrown out by the Federal Court of Canada last year because it failed to conduct a thorough-enough assessment.

Farmers and the public deserve to have these products regulated rigorously and transparently. Decisions must fully consider the benefits and costs plus there is an onus on users to use appropriate safeguards.

That said, however, farmers, who are more exposed than anyone to whatever risk there is, tend towards pragmatism over the product’s safety relative to the other perils of their job. They, like the rest of us, are surrounded by known carcinogens ranging from exhaust fumes and processed meats to alcohol or too much sun.

Farmers are more worried about losing the herbicide that has played a pivotal role in conservation agriculture and the chill this saga puts on new product investment — which is a valid concern.

Weeds are continuously evolving; there is a growing list of plants that are resistant to herbicides such as glyphosate, yet there are few new modes of action coming to market.

The glyphosate story might make good television drama someday, but it’s a horror flick for investors.

The post A short recap of the never-ending glyphosate saga appeared first on Manitoba Co-operator.

Without the money though, none of the exciting stuff gets done, and while hours wrestling with numbers may not inspire movie action sequences, the details of funding — where the money comes from, who’s all paying how much, how it’s used and to whose benefit and any vested interests of funders — can easily lead to organizational strife or accusations of bias, if not in the research results, then in what kind of research actually gets done.

We can see this in agricultural research in Canada. There’s public and farm-group spearheaded research. But there’s also a feeling those innovation sources are becoming co-opted. That includes a perception that big name companies increasingly are taking over the research sphere, or that their tendrils increasingly dig into even ostensibly neutral research. On the other side of the ledger, there’s the feeling government and political agenda may have their hands laid too heavily on how research funds are allocated.

Farmers, as the Canadian Wheat Research Coalition recently noted after announcing a third-party review of Canada’s wheat breeding system, put a lot of their own money back into research. They deserve reassurance that the research being done in their name actually serves their farms, without worry about recouping costs or driving profit for the organizations doing the researching.

There’s a burning need for innovation in Canadian agriculture, and corporate names can bring a lot of resources to that table. There’s no doubt big agribusiness has a lot of R&D weight to throw around, and that can result in more targeted attention into cutting edge innovation.

The problem, of course, is that not everything worth doing checks the boxes for potential profit.

‘We choose not to’

Back in September, our reporter Jeff Melchior wrote that progress was finally being made on a vaccine for bovine tuberculosis (bovine TB). MSX-1 didn’t quite convey the protection of the standard BCG vaccine in mice, but it also didn’t twig a false positive during TB testing — a main obstacle for herd vaccination.

In a funny bit of serendipity, the same week Melchior submitted his article, I floated to the top of the library waiting list for Everything is Tuberculosis: The History and Persistence of Our Deadliest Infection. The book, the latest by John Green, outlines the history, changing social perception, medical evolution, societal impacts and current state of tuberculosis.

Green took readers through Robert Koch’s discovery of the tuberculosis-causing bacteria — he’s the same guy who discovered that certain bacteria cause certain diseases — and his late-19th-century development of tuberculin, which a few decades later became the foundation of tuberculin skin testing. Likewise, Green talked about the live vaccine BCG and its development and adoption through the 1920s.

I had just read those terms in Melchior’s article. We still use tuberculin skin tests. BCG, meanwhile, is used in parts of the world, although it isn’t standard for human use in Canada or the U.S. and, because of the aforementioned false positives, has been a problem for livestock vaccination. It also doesn’t work very well, as vaccines go. Government of Canada materials put its efficacy of preventing TB at about 51 per cent, rising to 78 per cent for newborns being protected against meningeal TB.

To sum up, it’s not that effective and has a geriatric pedigree. And for all those flaws, it remains the only vaccine, for human or livestock, that we’ve got.

It seems mind-blowing that, in the technological age of gene editing, PCR tests, mRNA vaccines and artificial intelligence, we are still using tools that date back to the dawn of germ theory.

Why has the timeline been so sluggish? Most in Canada or the U.S. might be forgiven for thinking that new tools are simply not needed anymore. After all, the landscape is dotted by now abandoned sanitariums that emptied out with the advent of antibiotics. Today, with the unfortunate exception of some Indigenous communities, most of us think of tuberculosis as something out of a period drama rather than a real threat.

But the argument that tuberculosis and bovine TB no longer warrant substantial research attention doesn’t hold water. For one thing, as Green notes, it’s not a thing of the past. It has, in fact, historically held the spot as our deadliest infectious disease year upon year, except for the pandemic years of COVID-19.

According to the World Health Organization, tuberculosis killed 1.25 million people and sickened 10.8 million in 2023 alone. The agency also noted it was “a major cause of deaths related to antimicrobial resistance,” a boogeyman that health and veterinary officials worldwide have flagged for human health risk.

In Canada, Indigenous populations still had a TB rate of 26.4 per 100,000 in 2010, according to government statistics.

That doesn’t sound like a thing that’s not worth researching solutions for.

When it comes to bovine tuberculosis, there’s the argument that current monitoring and eradication systems are being effective in keeping infected animals out of the food chain. To be fair, the net of abattoir testing has successfully caught infected animals in recent years, the most recent being found in Manitoba this summer.

For those who have had herds depopulated or operations disrupted by quarantine though — not to mention the general industry anxiety of trade disruptions — they probably would have appreciated a more robust toolbox with some options developed in the last half-century.

Green suggests cost-effectiveness as a much more insidious reasoning than lack of need. There is an obvious, compassionate reason to throw investment at tuberculosis research, but not so much of a profit-based one. Those millions that still die of tuberculosis are largely in poorer countries. Corporately developed solutions have to pay for themselves. The math doesn’t pencil out.

“We know how to live in a world without tuberculosis, but we choose not to live in that world,” Green writes.

Bringing it back to Canadian agriculture, the issue of public versus private funding is an undercurrent in areas like the plant breeding space and dovetails with questions around food sovereignty.

We do need to build an environment where companies feel comfortable investing in innovation and where new companies can find fertile, profitable ground to grow and thrive. At the same time, farmer interest, divorced from motivations of profit, needs to have room to keep at least some kind of hand on the wheel.

Like most things, it’s a balance, one that gets increasingly hard to hold when public budget belts tighten or if public funds start to come with ideological strings. Good farmer-interested research is important, and needs to be protected.

The post ‘Everything is tuberculosis,’ ag funding debates included appeared first on Manitoba Co-operator.

If it’s the bewildering array of tariffs that the Americans have both imposed and threatened, then who really knows?

There are many theories as to what’s driving the tariffs, from an American desire to rewrite the world order to a need to increase government revenue.

In the end, however, it could all come down to presidential infatuation that doesn’t really need a reason.

It’s not easy to find a way out of the tariff thicket when we’re not sure how we got there in the first place.

China’s tariffs are different, very clearly tied to Canada’s decision to impose our own tariffs on its electric vehicles and steel and aluminium.

In this case, it’s possible to write a plausible-sounding narrative. By choosing to protect Canada’s young electric vehicle manufacturing sector, Ottawa put the country’s canola and pea growers at risk. As a result, the solution is obvious — scrap the Chinese EV tariffs and let our canola and pea markets go back to normal.

An op-ed in this paper from a few weeks ago, with the headline “Canola or cars: Canada can’t save both,” made that very argument.

In it, the writer compared the large economic value derived from the canola sector to that of the struggling electric vehicle industry.

“Canola is a winning industry,” he concluded.

“It feeds the economy, supports thousands of families and helps keep our rural communities alive. It doesn’t need endless subsidies or federal cheerleading — it just needs stable access to markets.

“That might mean giving ground on EV tariffs. That might mean swallowing some pride on the international stage. But Canada cannot afford to sacrifice a thriving sector to save one already on the brink.

“If we’re going to make hard choices — and we will — let’s make the one that protects what still works.

“Canada cannot lose canola.”

That’s a pretty clear-cut argument, and one with which a recent poll find most Canadians agree.

It’s also not the complete picture.

There was more to Canada’s tariffs than just trying to protect a nascent electric vehicle industry.

The government was also attempting to remain onside with the United States, which last year was trying to keep out Chinese electric vehicles.

This goal wasn’t going to be successful if China could do an end run around American tariffs by shipping them to Canada and eventually into the U.S. market.

Remember, Canada’s decision to impose tariffs on Chinese electric vehicles predates U.S. president Donald Trump’s second term.

If we were worried about the Americans then, we should be doubly worried now.

Of course, siding with the Americans on Chinese electric vehicles hasn’t helped us one bit since Trump became president for the second time.

There’s a strong argument to be made for scrapping the Chinese EV tariff to save canola, but we would need to do so with our eyes wide open.

So far, the U.S. has imposed tariffs on Canada using made-up reasons such as fentanyl and migrants.

What happens if we give it an actual reason?

On the other hand, the government must also think about what’s right for Canada, including its farmers.

No one said this was going to be easy.

This editorial first ran in the Western Producer. Karen Briere, Bruce Dyck, Robin Booker, Paul Yanko and Laura Rance collaborate in the writing of Western Producer editorials.

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There’s growing recognition that whatever emerges from the current United States administration’s reforms will bear little resemblance to the country and ally Canadians once knew. For the sake of our own survival, it’s time to move on.

Nowhere is that realization more critical than in food and agriculture.

Farm Credit Canada took a swing at quantifying just what it would take to achieve diversification in a newly released report, using 2023 trade statistics as a starting point.

It identified the chance for Canada to shift $12 billion worth of agriculture and food exports away from the U.S. market by focusing more on growing domestic demand and reducing interprovincial trade barriers, leveraging existing agreements with other trading partners and establishing new international partnerships.

If successful, it would reduce our U.S. market dependence in food and beverage exports to 50 per cent of 2023 levels.

That’s a daunting challenge. Sixty-eight per cent of Canada’s agriculture and food imports originate in the U.S., while 59 per cent of Canadian exports end up there. Breaking it down further, 78 per cent of Canada’s primary agriculture and 65 per cent of food and beverage imports came from the U.S., while 31 per cent of our primary product exports and 76 per cent of food and beverage exports move south.

While the size and scale of our U.S. dependence has increased, especially since the first so-called “free trade” agreement was inked in late 1980s, food and agricultural products in North America have always flowed between north and south.

It’s a pattern that archaeological records show predates European settlement of the region. Food crops such as beans, corn, squash, potatoes and tomatoes followed trade routes northward and were cultivated here centuries before the Selkirk Settlers arrived in the early 1800s.

The value of values

However, a diversified approach to keeping food on the table and exporting the surplus to pay the bills has also always been key to survival in these parts.

Dan Benoit, director of cultures and protocols at the Knowledge Circle for Indigenous Inclusion at Indigenous Services Canada, recently briefed the Canadian Farm Writers Federation on the role Indigenous and Métís peoples played in setting the foundation for today’s agricultural economy.

Métís practised agriculture, but they also hunted, fished and ferried goods across the Prairies, along with anything else they needed to do to make a living. Their ability and willingness to sell goods and services to more than one buyer (in other words, trade) was pivotal. Equally important, if not more so, was remaining true to their cultural identity and values.

It was their knowledge that supported the survival of the Selkirk Settlers and their skills that fostered the food production and trading economy that evolved.

Most of the first farmers from Europe to arrive in the area didn’t stay, but their departure coincided with the merger of the North West Company and the Hudson’s Bay Co. and the decline of the fur industry. Unemployed fur traders picked up farming where the Selkirk Settlers left off, until they were systematically dispossessed by the waves of new immigrants invited to the region by the Canadian government in the late 1800s.

Louis Riel Sr., a farmer and businessman in the Red River Settlement, was a key figure in breaking the Hudson’s Bay Company’s monopoly over trade of fur and agricultural goods from the region so that a diversified economy could flourish.

What do we draw from our past as we head into an uncertain future? As the saying goes, it’s never been a good idea to put all our eggs in one basket. In the grand scheme of things, the past four decades of economic integration with the U.S. may prove to be a brief blip in the annals of history.

Canadians are about to learn which is stronger — the allure of that north-south economic flow, or our commitment to our own culture and values.

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We watched as the miniaturized, fictional mammals scampered across night-time kitchens in the televised public service announcements of our youth, left peanut butter footprints on plates and had confrontations with house cats.

“That looked really real, but you knew it couldn’t be true, didn’t you?” the narrator would break in as the background faded to an African landscape.

It was a message we got from our teachers, parents, cartoons and, yes, the now nostalgia-laced clip from Concerned Children’s Advertisers: Ask questions. Don’t believe everything you see on a screen.

Given how adept artificial intelligence has become at generating text, photos and video, the message is arguably more relevant today than when it was running between BopIt! ads and the Kool-Aid Man.

Sources who spoke to our reporter Jeff Melchior for his recent cover story on misinformation and disinformation would likely agree.

“There’s so much information available, but what is right and applicable? That’s very difficult to decide, given that so much information is there,” University of Guelph researcher Ataharul Chowdhury said.

The very same day as we were preparing that article for publication, major news outlets reported a police raid on the compound of “Queen” Romana Didulo and her faithful — a movement so successful in QAnon-style misinformation and disinformation they’ve convinced followers that Didulo is sovereign of the “Kingdom of Canada.”

Just days prior, a CBC report noted the growing problem of AI-generated or altered severe weather images, leading to Environment and Climate Change Canada getting erroneous reports. Storm chasers cited in that article noted that the phenomenon was impacting their credibility.

Anyone who has dipped a toe into social media has likely seen the proliferation of fake content floating around online. It ranges from blatantly AI photos with too many fingers to online classifieds listings that are actually scams, to “screenshots” of sensational (and very fake) headlines edited with what appears to be the header and format of major news outlets .

A Google search and 20 seconds of due diligence quickly uncovers that no such article exists. On social media though, many keyboards get tapping and share buttons get clicked for every digital literate who takes the extra effort to verify. Each one of those keyboard warriors can spread the proverbial misinformation infection alarmingly fast.

Social media, by its nature, is prone to echo chambers. It feeds you content similar to what you’ve already engaged with and lets you talk to the people you’ve decided you want to talk to.

It also tends to aggregate people with similar interests or worldviews. That’s great when connecting with other people who like hiking, not so much when the common interest in question is an extremist view or a conspiracy theory.

Cami Ryan, who, in her off hours away from her role with Bayer Global, is an advocate warning against misinformation and disinformation was clear: The people seeding disinformation have something to gain from it.

It’s often rooted in ideology, she noted, but it’s also business looking for recruits to exploit.

“People are making money or getting value from disinformation,” she told Melchior. “That’s 100 per cent how it is.”

It’s her view that farmers’ generally pragmatic approach to life might help them sort fact from fiction, but they still live in the online world, she cautioned.

The unfortunate truth is that some groups that thrive on mis/disinformation dangle hooks in the same spheres that farmers, who may have legitimate criticism and frustrations with the federal government, populate. It’s easy to poke holes in something we’re already inclined to disagree with. It’s much harder if the premise broadly aligns with a political, religious or social perspective that we subscribe to. Disinformation creators are well aware of that vulnerability.

Chowdhury, meanwhile, also pointed to a growing lack of trust in science, which he says leaves more room for misinformation to take root.

In agriculture, he linked that to growing corporate interest in things like agricultural research and extension hitting the perceived neutrality of scientific work.

It’s true that farmers may have some cynicism in that regard, although it’s not just corporate interests. Farmers are also miffed at what they see is a politically driven hyperfocus on climate change in publicly funded research.

He’s also right that farmers have seen a contraction in public or farm-group extension. Only weeks ago, the Canola Council of Canada cut its field agronomy team, saying that farmers could seek those services with private agronomists, companies or provincial extension staff (roles that have also been rolled back in certain provinces in recent years).

So what are farmers to do?

Technology is always adapting, and we are adapting in our interactions with it. Many of us have changed our cell phone behaviour, for instance, to protect ourselves from scams.

It is no longer uncommon for someone to say that they don’t answer calls from numbers they don’t know. They screen their text messages. They don’t click unsolicited links or give out personal information and, if they want to check if a message about a bill or account is valid, they contact their provider independently.

In the same way, as Melchior’s sources argue, we need to develop defences against misinformation and disinformation. That includes digital literacy (there are already farmer-facing programs for that on offer in Manitoba). It also involves a conscious decision to pay attention to what we’re seeing rather than taking it at face value.

Does it make sense? Where did it come from? Can you confirm that it came from there? Are there any details that seem out of place? Does a little independent research (from reputable sources) back up or contradict it?

Just like putting on a seat belt or deleting suspicious emails unread, these defences must be automatic, consistent and something you encourage in those around you as well.

The post Guarding against misinformation: Do you believe in house hippos? appeared first on Manitoba Co-operator.

It’s a complex situation, but there are a few facts to keep in mind.

First, Alberta Beef Producers funds more than 50 per cent of the CCA’s budget through the refundable portion of its check-off. Right now, they send $0.53 from the $2 service fee to CCA, based on retained earnings. In the past, ABP’s share of CCA funding was calculated from gross earnings, which was unsustainable, given the refund rate in the province. The current calculation is part of an agreement set to expire July 1 next year.

Also, none of this affects ABP’s funding of organizations like the Beef Cattle Research Council, Canada Beef and the Public and Stakeholder Engagement team. Those get backed by the non-refundable federal check-off.

Since the announcement, I’ve spoken with Doug Roxburgh, ABP chair, its general manager Brad Dubeau and Tyler Fulton, CCA president. I appreciate the media access by all parties.

ABP has forwarded a list of recommendations to CCA it wants addressed. I haven’t seen the list, but the main thing seems to be that ABP wants to see changes to governance and financial structures. For example, ABP has an elected finance chair, as well as a committee that works with a third-party auditor and reports back, Roxburgh said. ABP is asking for a finance chair at CCA as well.

CCA doesn’t have quite the same structure. Fulton said they have a staff member who is the controller, who guides them through the financial nuances at meetings. MNP completes the audit. Each year, CCA strikes an audit committee comprising of CCA members who are not directors or officers for an independent view. Fulton said ABP’s request for a finance chair is reasonable, and he could see it serving a purpose, especially with funding agreements.

Because there are fewer cattle in the country, ABP is also worried about potentially fewer marketings and less revenue, and has started planning accordingly, says Roxburgh.

“When we reached out to CCA to say, ‘What are your thoughts about potentially having less dollars to work with going forward,’ not because of any other reason, except there’s just physically less cattle in the country, we haven’t been able to get a clear path on what that looks like,” said Roxburgh.

Roxburgh said these concerns started percolating a few years ago. There were positive steps after renegotiating their agreement with CCA, but ABP feels there hasn’t been enough meaningful change. The board held a vote wherein delegates opted in favour of withdrawal, he said.

At one point, I asked whether the withdrawal next summer was set in stone. Roxburgh said he’s not guaranteeing they’ll have an agreement in place. But he said they’re “fully committed” to honouring the current agreement, and “essentially have somewhere between eight to 10 months of runway to create a meaningful discussion with CCA.”

I think there’s reason to hope CCA and ABP can come to terms. Fulton said he didn’t see any major hurdles on ABP’s list, and he has a strong desire to return to a “unified, strong voice for all Canadian beef producers, with Alberta fully at the table and confident in the relationship.”

He also noted that he’s got a lot of respect for Roxburgh, and wants to mend the relationship between CCA and ABP.

There’s a lot at stake. Everyone’s got the CUSMA review on their minds.

Roxburgh said trade deal renegotiations should be wrapped before the current membership agreement expires, and I hope that comes to fruition. Beyond that, if CCA requested funds for specific trade issues that would affect all Canadian beef producers, ABP would support them, Roxburgh said.

Personally, I think any national cattle lobby would be a bit hamstrung without Alberta. It’s not just the funding — it’s the perspective from that province’s industry players and the credibility.

I’ve also heard various concerns about the optics of this public disagreement. That’s valid. Readers know there is a vein of scrappiness that runs through cattle country.

That’s an observation, not a criticism. It can be constructive or detrimental, depending on the situation and how it’s handled. I hope beef industry leaders can harness that conflict to address any issues and rebuild, so the industry has a stronger organization in the long run.

I know I haven’t captured everything that is going on (for example, the voting seat freeze ABP is under with the current agreement). I hope readers will use this as a starting point for more discussion and questions, and reach out to their provincial associations, as well as CCA reps, for more insight. After all, it’s your check-off dollars and your industry.

The post Untangling Alberta Beef Producers’ withdrawal from the Canadian Cattle Association appeared first on Manitoba Co-operator.

Talk about improving Canada’s only deep-water Arctic port has been written into Canadian political speeches for many decades.

And even before the port opened in 1931, the draw of an escape hatch from the daunting distance to either the east or west coast was inescapable for Prairie dwellers.

From the comfort of our southern homes, far from permafrost or sea ice, enabling northern Manitoba to improve its maritime capabilities seems an obvious move.

But we’ve been down this track before, and now the permafrost holding it up is melting and nobody has wanted to maintain it over the long term.

In March, the federal and Manitoba governments announced nearly $80 million in funding for the port in Churchill and the rail line to it.

Saskatchewan premier Scott Moe and Manitoba premier Wab Kinew also recently signed an agreement with Arctic Gateway Group to upgrade infrastructure and modernize supply chains through the port.

While these announcements are good signs for Prairie exporters, they are unlikely to be enough to drum up significant private investments in the port.

This is largely because it’s unlikely that companies will hinge a significant percentage of their business on the performance of a rail line that’s built on permafrost.

Proponents for the Port of Churchill often say climate change is reducing the amount of sea ice and that the shipping window at the port has, and will, increase significantly.

However, they often fail to mention that increased temperatures in the region also undermine the rail infrastructure to the port.

Barry Prentice, professor of supply chain management at the University of Manitoba, told the Western Producer last year that the problem with running a rail line over muskeg can be solved by moving it off the muskeg.

He said if 250 kilometres of the rail line are moved 50 to 100 km west of where the rail line is now, it could be built on rock instead of muskeg.

The cost of moving this line would be staggering, approximately $1.5 billion, according to Prentice, but once in place, it would be less vulnerable to a warming climate, including large flooding events such as the storms that washed away large sections of it in 2017.

Sections of this rail line built on permafrost will never be reliable, and this remains a significant investment impediment.

Mark Hemmes, president of Quorum Corp., which is Canada’s grain monitor, recently told the Western Producer the rail line is not the only challenge for grain shippers.

For instance, the port only operates for three months of the year, which isn’t a large enough window for the big grain companies that have buyers wanting consistent movement of grain.

It also takes longer for railways to recover cars compared to shipments to Vancouver or Thunder Bay, and grain companies would rather use their own export terminals compared to using a facility owned by the Arctic Gateway Group.

A University of Manitoba study suggests the port could already remain open much longer because of climate change, and Canada has already invested in an ice breaker fleet that could be used to extend the shipping season.

If a longer shipping season was demonstrated, alongside a reliable rail line, private investments would help the Port of Churchill become a critical infrastructure for Prairie shippers.

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That’s usually separate from the more overtly agricultural topics that we tackle in this space but, every once in a while, usually around this time of year and in the context of food prices, I allow myself to wax poetic a little on the many soups, stews, jellies, sauces and packages upon packages of garden produce bound for the freezer or canning mason jar.

The first full garden meal is a special milestone in the Stockford house, going back at least a couple of generations. At some point — sometimes in July but, traditionally, by the August long weekend — there’s a supper where a special point is made to ensure that everything on the table is fresh picked from the garden or, back in the days when the farm ran cattle, from our own herd. Minor exceptions were made for condiments and spices. The extras get partial points if they’re at least a Canadian farm-based product.

Regular readers will also know that, about once a month, we run a food column from professional home economist Getty Stewart. This week is one such edition.

The topics are timely to the season: articles on using squash in the fall, field-friendly farmer meals on the go for seeding and harvest or, most recently, summer suppers that won’t heat up the house. In recent months though, there’s also been several articles exploring the concept of buying local, using local produce and supporting local agriculture and food industry.

That’s not surprising. Everyone is being told to buy local these days with trade tensions simmering and issues like the need to streamline interprovincial trade getting more air time than they have in years.

Nor is food the only agricultural product where the conversation is happening. In our top livestock story this week, Jeff Melchior reports on the Canadian Wool Collective’s efforts to certify Canadian-made wool products and Canadian-grown wool.

That certification program, which only launched last year, has since expanded twice. Today, Melchior reports, they have three logos: one for products made of wool totally grown and processed within Canadian borders, one for wool harvested in Canada but processed elsewhere and one for products that contain at least half Canadian-grown wool.

How much difference is the buy local push actually having? Anecdotally, the consumers boycotting American goods have been loud about it. Retailers do claim Canadian goods sales are increasing, although grocery companies have also been criticized for being improperly liberal with labelling products with the Maple Leaf — meant to indicate to customers that a product is Canadian.

As of May, Canada’s year-to-date imports of American crop and animal production, food and beverage, textile mill and leather products, agrichemical and ag implements were up slightly from the year before (0.6 per cent). That’s according to the government’s industry-specific trade data portal, covering the most overtly agricultural options on the list.

Does that mean the “buy local” movement is not working? Not necessarily. “Holding steady” is still a noticeable decline, given that, between 2020 and 2024, imports from the U.S. in those categories increased by an average of 8.43 per cent annually, year-over-year.

Our imports from other places, meanwhile, jumped 18.1 per cent in those categories between January and May of this year compared to the same window in 2024. Even if we’re not buying totally local agriculturally and for food, the numbers do seem to suggest that we’re at least not buying as many American goods.

The post The pride of “Buy Canadian” appeared first on Manitoba Co-operator.

When it comes to providing opportunities for Canadians, however, policy matters far more than partisan politics. We have had a federal election and a cabinet has been appointed. We now need a laser focus on the fundamentals of good policy.

I have heard farmers say that agriculture is an afterthought around the cabinet table.

The sector makes up about seven per cent of the Canadian gross domestic product, or $150 billion per year, and employs 2.3 million Canadians, representing one in nine jobs across the country. An acknowledgement by the whole cabinet of that critical economic contribution would be a good way for the new federal government to offset farmer frustration about the placement of agriculture in national policy priorities.

Trade must be the priority issue for the new Minister of Agriculture and Agri-Food. In 2024, Canadian agriculture and food exports exceeded $100 billion, yet the policies that will support and expand Canadian agriculture and food exports are not always considered when Canada’s trade positions are set. A positive key first step would be explicit inclusion of agriculture in the “Team Canada” missions that are part of our outreach with United States customers and policy makers.

While agriculture, like most Canadian industries, has rightfully focused on the threat of U.S. tariffs in the past few months, protectionism is growing around the world. Canadian pork and seafood exports to China face a 25 per cent tariff. Certain canola products have been hit with a 100 per cent tariff by the Chinese government. Canadian agriculture and food exports have been sidelined by European non-tariff barriers, despite the Canada–European Comprehensive Economic and Trade Agreement (CETA).

Growing protectionism is compounded by rising political uncertainty, with the war in Ukraine and instability in the Middle East just two examples. Canada needs a strategic plan to deal with these threats.

The new federal ag minister, Heath MacDonald, could hit the ground running if he were to set up — together with representatives from export agriculture — a task group with the mandate to develop a strategic plan for agriculture and agri-food trade. This joint government and industry task group should set out to answer three basic questions:

First, in the short term, how does Canada mitigate the impact of tariffs and potential tariffs on agriculture and food exports?

Second, what is the strategic plan to eliminate non-tariff and tariff trade barriers currently blocking Canadian agriculture and food exports?

Third, what is the strategic plan to diversify markets for Canadian agriculture and food exports?

The overarching goal of the task group should be to set out a clear plan that will preserve the integrated North American market for agriculture and food products and to eliminate tariff and non-tariff trade barriers around the world.

The effort to develop a strategic plan cannot only be carried out by governments. There is also work to be done by farm groups and industry stakeholders.

There are more than 400 farm groups across Canada. This means that governments do not always receive a coherent consensus position from the sector. If the minister receives 400 different opinions, they face a risky policy position where any action would be subject to opposition by somebody. Lack of consensus within agriculture opens the door for governments to do nothing.

It is incumbent upon farmers, those who represent farmers, food processors and manufacturers to develop clear policy proposals aimed at the expansion of agriculture and food exports.

Agriculture and food trade is not just a matter of economic policy, it is also a national security issue, given the increasingly less stable geopolitical environment. This is especially true for the three countries who are signatories to the Canada-U.S.-Mexico Agreement (CUSMA). Canadian farmers can help deliver a reliable and safe food supply for consumers. This value from Canadian agriculture must be demonstrated in the strategic plan for agriculture and food trade and emphasized in upcoming trade discussions, including the impending review of CUSMA.

The recent election campaign saw the major parties promising a new approach to trade policy to respond to growing protectionism in both North America and around the world. The new federal government, including the new ag minister, has an opportunity to put these promises into action for farmers, processors and the millions of Canadians who work in the sector.

Current disruptions to world trade can be turned into opportunities for Canadian agriculture, but only if we see bold and decisive policy. The alternatives will be bad for farmers, bad for Canadian value-added processing and undermine the potential for growth in the Canadian economy.

Cam Dahl is general manager of the Manitoba Pork Council.

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While these reflections cannot change the past, they can inform how we build our shared future.

For rural Canada, some of the solutions are particularly close to home. Farms and small towns exist side by side with Indigenous reserve lands and communities.

Despite this proximity, there has often been limited interaction. But kids sometimes went to the same schools together, young Indigenous people came to work for farmers to make a few extra dollars and young people from both communities have met, fallen in love, and had families together.

We are moving forward, one relationship at a time.

Though progress was painfully slow, it is progress. In Saskatchewan, Treaty Land Entitlement settlements added prime productive acres to reserves. First Nations are now collectively the largest land holders in the country, second only to the federal government.

While this resource generates wealth, more often than not it means renting to non-Indigenous farmers and ranchers. This put dollars in First Nations coffers, but, in many cases, it hasn’t helped them recover roles as farmers.

There is opportunity for this to change.

Farms and the agriculture industry face a severe labour shortage. Farms are fewer and larger, and the families that own and operate them are smaller, meaning fewer hands to do the work. Rural depopulation has shrunk towns into villages, villages to hamlets, and hamlets back to their RMs.

Conversely, while the general Canadian demographic is tipping into retirement age, Indigenous populations are the youngest in the country.

Despite their land base and potential work force, there are few Indigenous farmers. According to Statistics Canada, five per cent of the country’s population is Indigenous, yet they represent only about two per cent of its farmers. This is even more marked on the Prairies, where Indigenous people make up 18, 17, and 6.5 per cent of the population of Manitoba, Saskatchewan and Alberta, respectively.

This isn’t to say attempts haven’t been made by various First Nations to get into farming. Some have been successful. Other high-profile projects have failed. There are many barriers to success, ranging from knowledge base and management experience, to access to capital, skills training and culture.

But some of the successes may show paths forward. At a panel discussion at Ag in Motion near Langham, Sask., this summer, three Indigenous farmers shared their experiences.

Terry Lerat, owner of 4C Farms on Cowessess First Nation in Saskatchewan, pointed to the importance of farming.

“We should be able to use our land, utilize our land to be self-sustaining as much as we can,” he said.

This would benefit everyone. A report from Farm Credit Canada estimates more Indigenous participation in agriculture could add $1.5 billion to Canada’s primary agriculture GDP.

Both Indigenous and non-Indigenous government policies and programs certainly have their role in laying the groundwork for this to happen, but there are also steps available at the personal, grassroots level.

Warren Many Grey Horses described how he got started working for a farmer near Cardston, Alta., before starting his own operation, GH Farms.

“As a native man, I would have never gained that knowledge of farming and I would never have that discipline if it wasn’t for him, so I was extremely grateful and thankful for that,” he said.

We can continue to move forward, one relationship at a time.

Karen Briere, Bruce Dyck, Barb Glen, Michael Robin, Robin Booker and Laura Rance collaborate in the writing of these editorials.

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