UN Expert Urges Huge Investment In Small Farmers

Asenior United Nations food expert appealed June 20 for a massive investment in smallholder farming to end poverty and hunger. In an interview before the G20 meeting of farm ministers, Josef Schmidhuber, deputy director of the statistics division of the Food and Agriculture Organization (FAO), said local poverty was the root cause of hunger, not

Plan And Visualize For Better Food Habits

A study by a McGill psychology researcher suggests simple ways of improving the way we eat. If you want to improve the way you eat, the best way to do so is to both make an action plan and visualize yourself carrying it out. “Telling people to just change the way they eat doesn’t work;


Drought Starting To Cut European Wheat Yields

Concern is growing that dryness is now damaging wheat in the European Union’s top producers France, Germany and Britain but late rain could still save the crops, analysts said on Tuesday. Some yield damage may have occurred in top EU wheat producer France, where harvest forecasts are being scaled back. In No. 2 producer Germany,

World Needs Modern Agricultural Technology

CropLife International executive director Denise Dewar promotes pesticides and genetically modified crops from her Washington, D.C. office, but as a young, idealistic student, she dreamed of saving the world from pesticides. “At that time I was being influenced by the environmentalists’ very negative anti-pesticides environment,” she told the Canada Grains Council’s annual meeting in Winnipeg

Two New Sunflower Crop Protection Products In The Works

Manitoba sunflower growers can expect to add two new products to their crop protection arsenals over the next couple of seasons. DuPont representat ive Frances Boddy told sunflower producers at last week’s Special Crops Symposium that the fungicide Vertisan is pending approval from the PMRA, the federal regulatory body that registers farm chemicals. The product


Is Cheap Food Something To Celebrate?

There were three storms making headlines over the past week, and only two of them were weather related. While the storm dubbed “Stormageddon” spread a wintry blast across 30 U.S. states, the Australian coast was hit by a major cyclone. But the storm that had all the world on edge last week was taking place

No Seaway Toll Hikes For 2011

Buoyed by a 15.5 per cent increase in traffic during 2010, the St. Lawrence Seaway has decided not to increase tolls during the 2011 shipping season. “The decision to extend the toll freeze was made in an effort to maintain the momentum underlying the seaway’s market development initiatives,” said Terry Bowles, the new president and

Britain Wants Deeper CAP Reform

The EU executive’s plans to reform the common agricultural policy are too timid, Britain’s farming and Environment Minister Caroline Spelman said Dec. 6. The European Commission adopted plans last month that would force farmers to do more to protect the environment in order to justify public subsidies. It also proposed moving some funding from direct


Invest In A Kennel Carrier

Our recent story about Manitoba’s Animal Care Act, which noted transporting unrestrained dogs in the back of pickups gives law enforcement officials cause to stop a vehicle and ticket the operator, has prompted a few calls and letters from readers. The complaints fall under three categories: Use of the word “hillbilly” by a provincial government

Axe Falls On 38 PMU Ranches

“It was a steady income… You knew what you were going to get a year or two in advance. There’s not too many commodities in agriculture you can do that with.” – GORDON MASON On a cloudy afternoon, Gordon Mason asks his wife Gladys for help finding his cowboy hat. “Going out in style,” she