Exercise and nourish your joints

I had spent many hours gardening one day last summer, and had awakened some neglected muscles. They were not happy after several hours of raking, shovelling and hauling heavy planters filled with soil around the backyard. On the positive side though, I burned quite a few calories. According to a calorie expenditure website, an adult

Container regulation change angers food processors

A coalition of food processors and farm groups is protesting a federal plan to no longer require standard-size packages. New rules mean American food producers will no longer have to use Canadian-size packages and that will give some of them an advantage in the grocery store aisle, said Chris Kyte, president of the Food Processors


New food products head to school

New food products head to school NuEats brand part of Manitoba Agri-Health Research Network’s effort to promote functional foods made from Manitoba-grown ingredients Barley waffles and tortilla chips, a yogurt-granola bar, and sundaes topped with saskatoons and oatmeal are some of the made-in-Manitoba foods headed to university this month — for a taste test. If

Canada’s role in meeting humanity’s biggest challenge

In 40 years’ time the world will need to have increased global food production and supply by 100 per cent to provide adequate nutrition for its nine billion or more inhabitants. This implies an annual growth in agricultural productivity of 2.5 per cent, from the same or less land. Over the past three decades, despite


Fish dish wins gold at Food Fight

Anew table-ready fish product called Walleye Wonders knocked out the competition at this year’s Great Manitoba Food Fight and earned Meda Olson first place and $15,000 worth of research-and-development expertise from the Food Development Centre. “I knew I had a good product that’s different,” said Olson, a homemaker from St. Martin in the northern Interlake

NIRS provides rapid feed-ingredient analysis

Cost of $40,000 can potentially be paid off within six months on a moderate-size beef or hog operation

The technique of Near Infrared Reflectance Spectrometry (NIRS) analysis is set to change the way livestock producers evaluate feed ingredients and have their rations formulated. Because this technology provides a rapid assessment of a wide range of nutritional parameters, such as energy value, dry matter and protein, the economic value of ingredients such as cereals


Canada lagging in ag research

Canadian agriculture is being shortchanged by governments when it comes to basic research compared to other countries, according to John Cranfield of the University of Guelph. “We are standing still while other countries are getting ahead of us,” said Cranfield, citing statistics from the Organization for Economic Co-operation and Development. The professor, an agricultural economist,

Food panel releases first study results

Eating out appears to be a once-a-week occasion for most Manitobans. We have strong views about local food but differing definitions of what “local” means. Most of us have never eaten buckwheat, hemp or flax-based foods. And while a little over 40 per cent of Manitobans buy organic food, an equal number don’t think organic


Healthier diet, less health-care spending

With a dose of government co-operation, Canada’s fruit and vegetable growers believe they can help cure the country’s health-care spending epidemic. Horticulture for Health, or Hort4Health as it likes to bill itself, is a working group of farmers, retailers, food processors and input suppliers that sprouted out of Agriculture Canada’s horticulture value chain roundtable. The

Weeds helped save his farm

Weeds aren’t always a farmer’s enemy. Sometimes they’re an ally. Grant Rigby says weeds helped him tackle soil salinity on his farm near Killarney and led him into organic agriculture. “The fundamental reason I dropped herbicide spraying was to allow plants to live on those areas of the farm where the crops I planted were