Traditional High-Fat Diets Offer Health Benefits

Born in 1939 in a remote community on Vancouver Island, Richard Atleo’s earliest food memories are of villagers eating feasts of salmon and seafood, foraged berries and gathered plant roots he can recall were “piled as high as a house.” Food at home was in stark contrast to the white bread, potatoes with a little

Celebrating 10 Years Of Accomplishments

It was a birthday party celebration of a different sort in Ninette, Manitoba. A jubilant group of adults and staff, all part of Southwest Community Options (SCO), recently lit up the candles there to mark 10 years of their progress in the little town. And it has been a remarkable decade. That’s because SCO was


Northern food insecurity

“We see a very, very bad and a very, very big problem,” Uche Nwankwo, Intern Professor at the Natural Resources Institute

Hunger haunts three out of four households in northern Manitoba with some families going entire days without food, new research has found. Last summer a team of researchers from the University of Manitoba’s Natural Resources Centre surveyed 473 households in 14 communities across Manitoba’s north. They found a 75 per cent incidence of household food

In Brief… – for Jun. 10, 2010

Dow gets access to Roundup: Monsanto Co. has agreed to license its Roundup Ready 2 Yield herbicide trait to Dow Chemical’s agricultural unit, an agreement that will let Dow boost its presence in the soybean market. Dow AgroSciences will pay Monsanto a royalty for stacking the technology with its seeds. As part of stacking, seed


Duff Roblin (1917-2010): Manitoba Crop Insurance Pioneer

“Farmers at the time were not insurance oriented at all.” – HAYDEN TOLTON To most Manitobans, former premier Duff Roblin’s main legacy will always be Duff’s Ditch – the floodway diverting spring run off from the Red River around Winnipeg that has saved the city many times. But Roblin, who died last week at 92,

So-Called “Activists” Are Actually Realists

My name is Dr. Kees Scheepens, pig veterinarian and pig farmer from the Netherlands. I was in Manitoba March 25 to give a talk at the University of Manitoba on the phasing out of gestation crates. Now I am sent the article “Animal Welfare Activists Target Pig Castration,” which published in the March 25 issue


Food Stats Show Some Positive Trends

Canadians are eating more fresh fruits and vegetables and less red meat, but that doesn’t necessarily mean the nation’s overall diet is improving. The average Canadian also consumes more sugar, coffee and cheese and nearly as much fat and oil as before, says a new Statistics Canada food consumption report for 2009. The average caloric

Bee Sensitive To Helpful Insects, Urbanites Urged

What do Mount Everest and honeybees have in common? Check out May 29. That was the day in 1953 when Sir Edmund Hillary and Sherpa Tenzing Norgay became the first people to successfully climb the world’s highest mountain. Hillary was a beekeeper from New Zealand. This year, May 29 was the day proclaimed by Ottawa,


Dave Donaghy, Former Agriculture ADM, Passes

Dave Donaghy, a former Manitoba Agriculture assistant deputy minister, died May 22 at the Concordia Hospital in Winnipeg. He was 61. Born in Boissevain Dec. 5, 1948, Donaghy grew up on a family farm near Ninga. He received an honours agriculture degree from the University of Manitoba in 1970, winning the gold medal. He later

Getting A Glimpse Of Rural Medicine

Jane Dueck made a startling discovery as she spent a week in Carman during late May experiencing rural life and medical practice. Her daily “commute” from her hotel room to the local hospital took exactly seven minutes. “That’s a new experience for me, to be able to get out the door just minutes before I