Editorial: A call for collaboration

A team of scientists in the United Kingdom and Bangladesh has taken an unusual step in their bid to get ahead of a deadly cereal fungus that has recently surfaced in Bangladesh. They have posted raw genetic data for the wheat blast pathogen on a new website — wheatblast.net. And they are inviting others to

Editorial: Balancing wheat research

Editorial: Balancing wheat research

No Prairie farmer worth his or her salt would admit to not being good at growing wheat. Farmers have been growing wheat in these parts for more than 200 years and they’ve earned quite a reputation for themselves selling it to the world. But a former senior federal research scientist with Agriculture and Agri-Food Canada


Editorial: The trouble with science: it changes

Growing up on the farm in the 1960s, two events caused a dramatic shift in the family’s eating habits. First, the cow died. She was replaced with skim milk powder, which scientifically speaking, offered similar nutrition, was less expensive, stored better and was much more convenient than maintaining a cow and milking two times a

Editorial: Future non-farmers

The agriculture community spends a lot of time and energy worrying about the future of the next generation of farmers. Succession planning has become a cottage industry, governments and agencies fall over backward creating young farmer programs, and there’s constant fretting over how we might smooth their way. But the fact is most of your


Editorial: Too many organizations

A few years ago, a group of Japanese wheat millers was touring the Canadian Wheat Board building in Winnipeg. In the transportation department, where there was a large wall map showing all the rail lines in Western Canada, they received the standard presentation on logistics. The presenter explained that to save distance and costs, wheat

Editorial: Hold the angry phone calls

At a time when governments are dealing with ballooning deficits, the Canadian Grain Commission is dealing with the opposite — a whopping surplus. As that surplus was accumulated on the basis of service fees, which are ultimately paid by farmers, many will consider that a problem. But there are a few things to consider before


Editorial: The upside of losing

It would appear that agri-industry is losing its two-decade-long battle to prevent labels on foods produced from genetically modified crops. This despite the millions upon millions of dollars poured into aggressive anti-labelling campaigns during state referendums on the issue. It has been a fascinating development to watch. Even as the pro-labellers successfully convinced legislators in

Editorial: CETA is on track for 2017. Now what?

The Comprehensive Economic and Trade Agreement between Canada and the European Union is on track for implementation in 2017, a full decade since leaders first began discussions. So now what? Last week, the Co-operator began a three-part series on CETA, assembled by a team of reporters from the Glacier FarmMedia network of publications. The series



Editorial: Easy to say, not easy to do

Editorial: Easy to say, not easy to do

Most would agree that the so-called revenue cap on Canada’s two national railways is an imperfect solution to a complicated problem. Officially called the Maximum Revenue Entitlement (MRE), it was implemented as part of a major reform of grain transportation policy by Justice Willard Estey in 2000. It was an alternative to his proposal to