Editorial: Too small to bother?

There’s been lots of talk in the news lately about financially troubled corporations and how their plights are handled by governments. For example, the Quebec-based aerospace and mass-transit company Bombardier has been the subject of controversy after it proceeded to give 50 per cent pay increases to senior executives shortly after receiving yet another taxpayer-funded

Editorial: By the numbers

Statistics Canada says there were just over 13.3 million households in Canada at the time of the 2011 census, a number that has surely grown since then. The numbers crunchers at the agency rather dryly define the term as “… a person or group of persons who occupy the same dwelling and do not have


Editorial: Market realities

Over the years people have done some pretty goofy things to make money. Probably the best example is Gary Dahl, the inventor of the hare-brained scheme that was the pet rock. The story goes he was sitting in a bar in Los Angeles with friends in the early 1970s, listening to them complain about their

Editorial: Family feud

Everyone has that cousin, uncle or sibling. You love them, they’re family after all, but sometimes you just don’t like them much. Maybe it’s their insistence on talking about their controversial politics over Christmas dinner. Perhaps it’s the way they can’t just talk about how much they like their new tractor without running down yours.


Editorial: The missing link

Canada’s sheep and goat producers had better not be counting on me to earn a living. Don’t get me wrong, they produce excellent products, but neither of these protein sources has ever been a big part of my diet. I can’t remember the last time I had a lamb chop. A few years ago now, for

Editorial: Bonanza bind

Over 100 years ago there was a land rush on the northern plains of North America. The arrival of railways suddenly opened vast tracts of land to settlement and agriculture. The world responded with a flood of humanity. These days we think of the romantic image of homesteading families from all corners of the world,


Editorial: Pre-competitive advantage

The idea of collaboration — and even mergers — among farm commodity groups has begun to find traction lately. The latest round came at the annual CropConnect conference, which brings together a number of the smaller commodity organizations at a single event where they conduct their annual general meetings. That event demonstrates the merits of

Editorial: Biofuels fight

[Updated March 2, 2017]: What would a world with another five billion bushels of corn on the market look like? I am willing to bet that the grain growers among our readership just felt a small blood pressure spike at the very thought, anticipating dramatically lower crop prices. That figure represents the portion of the


Editorial: Playing with trains

With spring just around the corner, it’s becoming clear a big wreck in grain shipping is unlikely this winter. Despite a 76-million-tonne crop to move, big blizzards and those infamous periods of frigid winter temperatures, the system has held together. Mark Hemmes of grain monitor firm Quorum said in a recent article in the Co-operator

Editorial: Mutual respect

I can’t count the number of times I’ve heard someone from this industry lament that consumers just don’t understand them. They don’t realize that agriculture produces some of the safest and most readily available food in human history, these ‘agvocates’ state, all on low margins, and at high risk. From their positions of comfort in