Editorial: If you’re feeling down, reach out

There are mornings this time of year when it can be pretty hard to imagine the arrival of spring. The world is still locked in the frigid embrace of winter. The spiritual warmth of Christmas and New Year is far behind us. The cold and flu season continues to run riot. Spring still seems impossibly

Editorial: Ultimate inside information

One day in my previous life as director of information for the Canadian Wheat Board, a Chinese delegation was in Winnipeg to negotiate a wheat purchase. By that time, Chinese negotiations were down to a few days rather than the few weeks they had taken in the 1960s and 1970s, but there was still a


Editorial: Saving playoffs lobster

No, your editor has not suddenly developed a love of free-form beatnik poetry in middle age, producing that seemingly nonsensical headline. It might not look like it, but those unrelated words are conveying critical information that could save lives under the right circumstances. The problem is a familiar one to any rural resident — how

Editorial: Divided we fall

A metaphorical bombshell exploded this week over the corner of Portage and Main, the historic heart of Canada’s grain trade. Richardson International, Winnipeg’s largest homegrown grain trader, is pulling its financial support out of the Canola Council of Canada, Soy Canada and the Flax Council of Canada. As a result, the flax council has already


Editorial: Meeting season

As this column is being written, Brandon’s Keystone Centre is a flurry of activity, with this being Ag Days week. It’s no small feat, transforming a hockey arena and recreation complex into one of the premier winter agriculture shows in North America. The sheer amount of large farm machinery that will enter (and later exit)

Editorial: Future farms

What will the farm of tomorrow look like? There’s certainly no end of opinions on offer when that question gets asked. Will the average Prairie farm become a massive undertaking, measured in tens of thousands of acres, wired in every corner to harness the power of big data? That’s certainly one possibility, and if history


Editorial: No fake news here

The tree is now down, the fruit cake all eaten So it’s time for our annual New Year’s greetin’ On the past year’s news we offer reflection And give a glimpse of the future direction Plus offer valuable free farming advice On what to grow, and when to sell at top price For a while

Editorial: Happy Christmas

Here in the heart of winter, those of us living north of the equator find our days drawing ever shorter until reaching their nadir; we must find comfort where we can. Societies through history have dealt with this by having a mid-winter celebration as a centrepiece of their calendars, be they written, celestial, lunar or


Editorial: Building bridges

Earlier this month the A&W restaurant chain may have taken a significant step towards rebuilding its battered image with the nation’s cattle farmers. The company has been the source of much controversy in recent years after it introduced a marketing strategy branding the beef in its burgers as free of hormones and other growth promoters.

Editorial: Rotation, rotation and rotation

In the early 1980s, the wheat board developed an idea called the Market Assurance Plan (MAP). That was back when there were perennial transport bottlenecks and the whole crop could sometimes not move by the end of the crop year. Even if it could move in total, it could be feast or famine for supply