Bees Need Diverse Landscape To Thrive

If you’ve ever complained about there being too many bees around, consider yourself lucky. Pollinators – such as bees, butterflies and bats – are responsible for the continued existence of more than 70 per cent of the world’s flowering plant population. But they are significantly decreasing in number. By carrying pollen from the male to

Land-Grab Warning

Canadian farmland is not immune to the global land grab that’s underway as corporations and countries position themselves for the prospect of future food shortages, the National Farmers Union says. “We may be on the verge of a new system wherein those who work the land do not own it – a situation that would


Billion-Dollar Agriculture Fund For Sudan

Egypt’s Beltone Private Equity and Sudan’s Kenana Sugar Company are launching a $1-billion agricultural investment fund, Beltone said March 23. Gulf and other Arab countries have been investing in a range of farming projects in Sudan, Africa’s biggest country by area and long viewed as having huge agricultural potential. “We are launching the fund with

Arctic Melt To Cost Up To $24 Trillion By 2050

Arctic ice melting could cost global agriculture, real estate and insurance anywhere from $2.4 trillion to $24 trillion by 2050 in damage from rising sea levels, floods and heat waves, according to a report released Feb. 5. “Everybody around the world is going to bear these costs,” said Eban Goodstein, a resource economist at Bard


Nothing Passé About Old MacDonald’s Approach

Manitoba’s farm media is full of the same story. The stories have different headlines and characters, but the main issue is as recurring as the beat of a drum. “What’s wrong with Prairie agriculture? What’s wrong with the AgriStability program? What’s happening to commodity, fertilizer, and cattle prices?” Sometimes columnists allude to the problems that

Land Rental — Making It Fair For Both Parties

Securing rented land with the right agreement is an important part of farm planning. The approaching crop season should have farmers thinking about production plans, marketing strategies and the inputs they require to get the crop in the ground and growing. They should also be thinking about the rental contract, legal documents and an acceptable


Why support farmers who don’t need it?

American President Barack Obama is creating a bit of a stir in agriculture circles. For one thing, he has indicated he’ll bring in a ban on meat packers owning cattle. This has been a long time on the wish list of American ranchers, who believe that when packers own cattle, they are able to manipulate

Rural co-ops get better credit: survey

Co-operatives in rural Canada got loans and credit in 2007 much more readily than their urban counterparts, a new Statistics Canada survey shows. Overall, StatsCan said, the “vast majority” of co-operatives got all they asked for in new or additional loans, lines of credit or credit cards, but about 20 per cent of co-operatives surveyed


Crown lands reclassification case raises concerns

“We’re treating it as the canary in the coal mine. “ – SHANE SADORSKI, MCPA A cattle farmer in northwestern Manitoba is discovering that it can be cheaper to rent land than not to have it at all. The farmer in the Rural Municipality of Mossey River north of Dauphin may have to spend thousands