Doug Connery passes

Well-known Manitoba vegetable farmer and industry leader Doug Connery died Dec. 15 after suffering a heart attack.

The 56-year-old owner of Connery Riverdale Farms near Portage la Prairie was a director of Peak of the Market, past president of the Vegetable Growers Association of Manitoba, past president of the Canadian Horticultural Council (CHC), and human resources chair of the CHC. He was named Manitoba’s Young Farmer of the Year in 1990.

Connery was also president of the Delta Beach Association and was a director of the Association of Lake Manitoba Stakeholders.

Connery was catapulted into the national limelight in the spring of 2011 when the provincial government opted to divert Assiniboine River flood waters across his farmland southeast of Portage in a bid to avoid a downstream breach of dikes along the river.

South Korea market a step closer

Reuters / South Korea has taken a “major step” to ending an eight-year-old ban on imports of Canadian beef, Canada’s agriculture and trade ministers said Dec. 30.

The South Korean Parliament has ratified import health requirements for Canadian beef under 30 months of age, one of the final steps to ending the ban, the ministers said in a release.

South Korea is the last major beef-importing country to agree to lower its restrictions on Canadian beef, since a 2003 case of mad cow disease (BSE) in Canada.

“This has been a long journey and today’s announcement is a big step forward for our hard-working beef producers to once again bring their world class product to the South Korean marketplace,” said Agriculture Minister Gerry Ritz.

Canada is the world’s third-biggest beef shipper and in 2002, prior to the ban, South Korea was Canada’s fourth-biggest beef market.