From big city to small community

Coming from a city of 200,000 and a land of millions, the rural Manitoba farming community of Kenton may seem like a strange place for a Japanese exchange student to visit. However, 17-year-old Natsumi Yoshida, who is involved in the Global Partners Institute, says she is enjoying every minute with her host family, the community,

UN-backed land use rules ready for final OK

milan / reuters / After three years of debate, the United Nations is issuing guidelines on responsible land use as part of an effort to regulate so-called land grabbing and boost food security. The guidelines include promoting equal rights for women in securing title to land, creating transparent record-keeping systems accessible to the rural poor,


Latest Ag Canada forecast ups 2012-13 grain and oilseed production

Agriculture and Agri-Food Canada has slightly increased its production estimates for the major grains and oilseeds for the upcoming crop year, which starts in August. The latest estimates from its market analysis division pegs total production at 70.320 million tonnes, up slightly from its February forecast of 70.120 million tonnes and 2011-12 production of 65.856

Decadent ice cream saves the day for General Mills

chicago/reuters / General Mills Inc.’s mix of foods and its limited exposure to Italy and Greece have insulated it a bit from Europe’s economic crisis, one of the company’s top executives said March 14. The maker of Cheerios and other cereals has seen some European shoppers buy more items when they are discounted, or trade


Looming political fight puts U.S. farmers on battlefield

Analysis: It usually takes a year to draft new Farm Bill but the cost of failure may be too high to bear

(Reuters) U.S. lawmakers are short on time and money to make the biggest cuts in agriculture in a generation and failure risks unintentionally driving up food prices and adding to an already onerous deficit. Fractious Republicans and Democrats may wait until the last minute to agree to significant cuts to farm supports amid historically high

Giving meat a bad name

Laws are like sausages — it is best not to see them being made.” This quote has been widely but wrongly attributed to Otto Von Bismarck, the “Iron Chancellor” of Germany in the 19th century, which proves that misinformation was spreading long before the Internet. However, the Internet is certainly a much more efficient way


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

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

Peru loosens restrictions on Canadian cattle

Peru has reopened its markets to Canadian beef and dairy cattle, Agriculture Minister Gerry Ritz said in a Feb. 21 release. Canada Beef and the Canadian Livestock Genetics Association estimate the market to be valued at more than $2.5 million in 2012 for the Canadian cattle sector. Canadian exporters are eligible to export to Peru