Growing from seed

One of the first flowers to make an appearance in the spring garden is the pansy — and it is one of the last to cease blooming in the fall. Pansies are definitely cool-weather plants, and in fact, they sometimes take a blooming holiday in midsummer during the hottest weather, and that is acceptable because

Farmers fear consolidation, not foreigners, in Viterra bid

Reuters / For most of the past year, western Canadian farmers have braced for the rush of competition that will follow the end of the Canadian Wheat Board’s 69-year-long monopoly on grain marketing in August. Now, they’re preparing for the possibility of seeing less than expected. The fertile region’s biggest grain handler, Viterra, said March


Study gives more reasons for passing on red meat

(Reuters) People who eat a lot of red meat are more likely to die at any given time than those who go light on the burgers and hotdogs, according to a U.S. study that followed more than 100,000 people over several decades. The more servings of both processed and unprocessed red meat people reported eating

Syria needs to import more grain milan / reuters / Syria, hit by a civil unrest, needs to raise cereals import by about a third in the current marketing year after its local grain output 10 per cent dropped in 2011, the United Nations’ Food and Agriculture Organization (FAO) said March 14. “Continued civil unrest

Experts search for ways to cut food waste

Reuters — Cleaning your plate may not help feed starving children today, but the time-worn advice of mothers everywhere may help reduce food waste from the farm to the fork, help the environment and make it easier to feed the world’s growing population. Hard data is still being collected, but experts at the Reuters Food


Red meat associated with high risk for cancer

People who eat lots of red meat may have a higher risk of some types of kidney cancer, according to a U.S. study of thousands of adults. Researchers writing in the American Journal of Clinical Nutrition found that middle-aged adults who ate the most red meat were 19 per cent more likely to be diagnosed

Supplementary rearing worth a second look

Genetic advances in litter size over the last 15 years have provided hog producers with the potential for 14 or more piglets born alive per litter and the ability to boost herd output to 30 pigs weaned per sow. But as I have pointed out in previous articles, this presents a number of challenges and

Conference Board Of Canada Says Ethanol Doesn’t Deserve Its Bad Reputation

co-operator contributor / ottawa Using crops to produce ethanol hasn t raised food prices and it positions Canada for a strong bioeconomy, according to a new report from the Conference Board of Canada. What s more, next-generation technologies, flex-fuel vehicles, and supporting policies could extend the role ethanol plays in Canadian transportation and manufacturing, adds


Get Big, Or Get Small

In 1999, the Peters family reached a crossroads, with Walter and Erna eyeing retirement, and son Marlin and wife Deb looking to make a start in farming. But taking over a 1,000-acre grain farm wasn t an appealing prospect. We were kind of at the point where the equipment was aging, and something needed to

Think Red In The Spring

Most gardeners grow a few onions, whether they are multipliers to use in summer salads, sweet Spanish onions, the huge round slices of which grace many a burger in the summertime, or cooking onions grown from sets and stored for winter use. Fewer gardeners, however, seem to grow red onions, which I think is a