A major donation in honour of the late Don Penny will add to funds supporting ACC’s ag expansion.

On the shoulders of history

A $1 million donation in honour of MNP’s late co-founder, Don Penny, has contributed to the future of ag education in western Manitoba

When Assiniboine Community College (ACC) set its sights on dramatically expanding agriculture programs, Don Penny, co-founder of MNP and a local success story, was one of their first calls. “He gave us his unvarnished opinion,” college president Mark Frison recalled. “It was helpful. He gave some great advice, not only about how to approach the



Darlene Compton, shown here on provincial budget day in 2020, is Prince Edward Island’s new ag minister. (PrinceEdwardIsland.ca)

P.E.I. finance minister moves to ag file

Darlene Compton named agriculture minister in shuffle

Prince Edward Island’s deputy premier now handles the provincial agriculture file following a cabinet shuffle Friday. Premier Dennis King has named Darlene Compton, MLA for the riding of Belfast-Murray River, as minister of agriculture and land, justice and public safety minister and attorney general, replacing Stanhope-Marshfield MLA Bloyce Thompson. Thompson, who had handled the ag

A tract of Amazon jungle burns as it is cleared by farmers at Rio Pardo in Brazil's Rondonia state on Sept. 15, 2019.

Compensation key to tackling Brazilian deforestation

Dreyfus Brazil CEO says tackling deforestation involves compensating farmers

Brazil’s chief executive of commodities trader Louis Dreyfus says that if society wants to seriously tackle deforestation, mechanisms are needed to compensate farmers for conserving trees. Murilo Parada told an audience at the World-Agritech South America Summit in Sao Paulo that the development of a carbon market would be key to protect the environment and


The World Trade Organization (WTO) headquarters in Geneva, Switzerland on Oct. 28, 2020. (Photo: Reuters/Denis Balibouse)

Comment: WTO steps back from the brink

But repairing long-standing problems still requires solid efforts

After decades of conflict that has neutered its work, the World Trade Organization looks to be back in business. Its highest decision-making body – a conference of ministers from the organization’s 164 member nations – has just met for the first time since 2017. None of what the ministerial conference (dubbed MC12 due to being

Olds College president Stuart Cullum announces a new partnership with Saskatchewan Polytechnic. (Liam O’Connor photo)

Partnership gives Prairie ag students new 800-acre opportunity

Saskatchewan farmland bequest expanded Smart Farm eastward

Students from Saskatchewan Polytechnic and Olds College will be getting more opportunities to collaborate with each other on a large scale. The two institutions have signed a memorandum of understanding (MOU) which entails both schools working together for five years on various programs, notably Olds College’s Smart Farm operation. The partnership comes as a result


Lisa Thompson. (LisathompsonMPP.ca)

Ontario ag minister returns in another Tory majority

Lisa Thompson retains seat in election

Ontario’s governing Progressive Conservatives will head back to the legislature with their incumbent agriculture minister at the caucus table. Lisa Thompson, Premier Doug Ford’s minister of agriculture, food and rural affairs since June last year, easily held her southwestern riding of Huron-Bruce in Thursday’s provincial election by a spread of 15,594 votes over Liberal challenger

AAFC’s Drought Monitor map at April 30, 2022. (Agriculture.canada.ca)

Drought gone in Manitoba but worsening in Alberta, AAFC reports

MarketsFarm — Record-breaking precipitation in southern Manitoba and eastern Saskatchewan helped improve moisture conditions in the region in April, taking much of the area out of the drought classification, according to the latest Drought Monitor report from Agriculture and Agri-Food Canada (AAFC) for the period ended April 30. Two separate Colorado lows brought significant snow,


Workers in the JBS beef plant at Brooks, Alta. appear in a screen shot from a 2018 corporate video. (JBS Canada video screengrab via YouTube)

Changes to TFW program to expand worker availability

Workplace LMIAs now valid for 18 months

The federal government is boosting the availability of temporary foreign workers (TFWs) to ag and other understaffed sectors under a list of policy changes announced Monday. Employment and Workforce Development Minister Carla Qualtrough announced what’s called the Temporary Foreign Worker (TFW) Program Workforce Solutions Road Map, which the government said “marks the next step in

The United Nations’ General Assembly Hall in Manhattan. (BWZenith/iStock/Getty Images)

Food, farming, forestry must be transformed to curb global warming, UN says

Earlier draft of panel report called for reduced intake of meat

Reuters — Protecting forests, changing diets, and altering farming methods could contribute around a quarter of the greenhouse gas cuts needed to avert the worst impacts of climate change, according to the United Nations’ climate panel. But the changes are unlikely to happen unless governments act to spur them along, the report from the Intergovernmental