Wake-Up Call

There’s much we don’t know and may never know in the so-called Triffid Affair that has devastated Canada’s flax industry in the past month. In fact, all we do know about this development so far is that buyers in Canada’s most important flax market believe they have identified small quantities of the genetically modified variety

Who Owns The Carbon Credits?

Keystone Agricultural Producers has received numerous phone calls since the announcement regarding beneficial management practices (BMPs) under the Environmental Farm Action Program (EFAP) and Manitoba Sustainable Agriculture Practices Program (MSAPP) Sept. 2, 2009. The calls were regarding confusion about who owns the project-related carbon credits. The application form states that carbon offsets (if any) achieved


Fertilizer Pricing The Last Straw For Farmers

“Well, if they (farmers) won’t pay our prices, we’ll grow the grain in China or India.” In the late winter of 1975, our family was having lunch in a Brandon, Manitoba restaurant. At the table next to ours, three fertilizer executives (two local and one from the U. S.) were discussing product pricing and bemoaning

Letters – for Oct. 1, 2009

MWI intervened to save home economics I read with interest, the item, “Home economics heads to the second century at U of M.” (Pg. 12, Sept. 17, 2009) Members of Manitoba Women’s Institute, an organization that has from the start been closely connected with the University of Manitoba and home economics, will also celebrate its


A Powerful Legacy

World attention was focused last week to the passing of Norman Borlaug, the American scientist known as the Father of the Green Revolution and recipient of the Nobel Peace Prize in 1970 for his efforts to end world hunger. Borlaug died at the age of 95, still passionately committed to the role science can and

Saving Manitoba’s Rural Infrastructure

It seems every time you turn around, rural Manitoba loses another piece of grain-handling or transportation infrastructure. Arborg saw the loss of the Viterra elevator in April, and as of Sept. 12, Canadian National Railway (CN) will no longer deliver producer cars to nine of its loading sites. The future of these sites is still


Starvation In An Age Of Plenty

Other countries’ domestic and foreign policies are often at the root of food disasters What is it about Africa? With its tropical climate and rich soil, it should be able to feed its teeming millions many times over. Yet too often Africa becomes a metaphor for famine and hunger. In 1984-85 a horrified world responded

The Most Serious Blunder Of Their Lives

I t seems that Manitoba farmers’ periodic attraction for U. S. wheat varieties of uncertain quality is not a recent phenomenon. This item appeared in the January 1886 issue of the Nor-West Farmer. The Northwestern Miller in a recent editorial says: it may be sad news to the London miller that a large number of


World Loses Its Leading Hunger Fighter

CIMMYT joins with members of the international development community to mourn the passing of Nobel Peace Laureate and renowned wheat scientist, Norman E. Borlaug, who died Sept. 12 at the age of 95 from complications from cancer, after an exemplary life dedicated to fighting hunger in developing countries. Borlaug worked as a CIMMYT wheat breeder

These Grassroots Are All Astroturf

In the long, expensive battle fought by U. S. farmers to make corn-based ethanol the premier alternative fuel in America, few Washington, D. C. influence-peddlers fought harder and spent more in opposition to it than the American Petroleum Institute. In fact, you name the biofuel issue and API and its fat cheque-book made it into