Op/Ed & Farming Articles - Manitoba Co-operator

Keeping kids safe on the farm is a dilemma the farming community needs to address.

Editorial: Too many kids still dying on farms

By Laura Rance-Unger September 17, 2020

Over the last two decades there has been a noticeable increase in education and training designed to make farms safer places for children to grow up. Kids, even toddlers, often like to tag along with their farming parent. As they grow older and more capable they have traditionally been an important source of labour on

Comment, Op/Ed

Comment: Time to improve conditions for foreign workers

Temporary foreign worker programming earneda hot seat this year due to workers falling ill with COVID-19

By D.C. Fraser September 15, 2020

Now is the time for the Canadian government to overhaul the country’s foreign worker program. It is the right thing to do and will benefit Canadian agriculture. The COVID-19 pandemic has highlighted many of the shortcomings of the current program, which sees thousands of people come to Canada each year to work on farms across

‘Undermining food manufacturing is to deny the agri-food sector its strategic foothold. Innovating and growing an economy, especially in rural communities, becomes more challenging.’ – Sylvain Charlebois.

Comment, Op/Ed, Other

Comment: Walmart flexes its muscles and food processors suffer

Canadian food manufacturing has lost 12 jobs a day everyday since 2012 and a July announcement by Walmart Canada won’t help

By Sylvain Charlebois September 14, 2020

Consumers got a glimpse of how food supply chains work — or don’t — at the beginning of the COVID-19 pandemic. Now Walmart is giving them a chilling new perspective. During the panic-buying phase in the early spring, few experts in the food industry would have predicted the unprecedented levels of vertical co-ordination and incredible

Editorial, Op/Ed, Other

Reporter’s Take: COVID-19 too close

By Alexis Stockford September 10, 2020

My father doesn’t waterski much anymore, although I remember him as an avid skier when I was younger. I remember watching him cut the wake on the slalom, on the wakeboard, and even turning the occasional 180 on the trick skis. Nowadays, though, inviting him to take a turn behind the boat is more likely

Editorial, Op/Ed

Editorial: Surplus food purchases symbolic of broader discussion

By Laura Rance-Unger September 4, 2020

On the surface, the $50-million Surplus Food Rescue Program recently launched by the federal government is simply a sensible response to highly unusual circumstances. The government is buying up surplus fruits, vegetables, meat, fish and seafood from farmers and fishers who would normally supply the foodservice sector and distributing it to Canadians suffering from food

Columns, Editorial, Op/Ed

Reporter’s Take: Farmer-owned AAFC?

By Allan Dawson September 2, 2020

In 2019 Canadian farmers grossed almost $37 billion from crop sales. Each started with a seed. That’s why getting farmers to pay more for plant breeding — often referred to as “value creation” — is important. It’s also contentious. Nobody wants to pay more and a lot of farmers worry royalties will enrich seed companies

Editorial, Op/Ed

Editor’s Take: Pork sector inefficiently efficient

By Gord Gilmour August 20, 2020

Has the drive for efficiency gone too far in the pork sector? For the past few decades the drive has been to vertical integration, closely matching production and processing capacity, and larger and more efficient (and far fewer) processing plants. In this MBA-driven world view, any excess surge capacity is viewed as an inefficiency to

Editorial, Op/Ed, Other

Editor’s Take: COVID-19 a shared problem

By Gord Gilmour August 13, 2020

There’s being good, and there’s being lucky. Sometimes it’s easy to confuse the two. That’s likely what was happening while Manitoba’s COVID case numbers failed to mount. With day-after-day reports of no cases, many seemed to conclude that while COVID was a problem, it wasn’t a Manitoba problem. That’s simply incorrect and it ignores how

Comment, Op/Ed, Other

Comment: Leaving town for the country

With more people able to work from home, many consumers are apparently looking to trade in city living for open space, and the agri-food sector will have to adjust

By Sylvain Charlebois August 11, 2020

People seem to want to flee urban centres these days. The real estate market is overheating in regions outside of major cities like Toronto, Montreal, Vancouver, and Halifax. Recent real estate reports suggest sales are up 20 per cent in many rural markets and prices have increased by at least five per cent since the

'Governance on the new merged “Seeds Canada” organization will be stacked against the seed grower,' says Lyndon Stall.

Comment, Op/Ed

Comment: Seed growers — wake up!

Producer voice must be heard in this month’s Seed Synergy vote

By Lyndon Stoll August 11, 2020

Large multinationals are counting on seed and commercial growers skimming headlines and staying on the sidelines. The Seed Synergy groups that want to merge their organizations into a new “Seeds Canada‚” The Canadian Seed Growers’ Association (CSGA), Canadian Seed Trade Association (CSTA), Commercial Seed Analysts Association of Canada (CSAAC), Canadian Seed Institute (CSI), Canadian Plant

Daily Network News

Southern California honeybees show resistance to varroa mites

Pulse Weekly: SaskPulse optimistic despite input, crop price concerns

Canadian aquaculture should be classed as agriculture, industry groups say

Op/Ed