Opinion: Food policies should support small-scale producers

Ramping up food production via large-scale farming operations alone is unlikely to eradicate world hunger

Ten years ago, a spike in food prices ignited a global food crisis that compromised the ability of the world’s poorest people to access an adequate diet. Governments around the world responded by supporting the expansion of large-scale agricultural production, based on the idea that producing more food in this way translates into lower prices

Digvir S. Jayas (left), Lysa Porth and MP Terry Dugid announce a new research project at the University of Manitoba.

New risk-management research

Federal government invests nearly $1 million in the hope of developing better risk management programs for forage producers

Farmers could soon be turning to eyes in the sky to better manage the risk associated with hay and forage production. The federal government recently announced it would invest $988,000 in collaborative research aimed at using satellite-based technology to estimate forage growth at the farm level. That information would then be developed into a forage



Manitoba Watershed Group To Help Lead The Battle For Better Water Management

The Tobacco Creek Model Watershed project is one of four groups selected by the Canadian Water Network (CWN) to co-manage research that will lead to better water management. “We have been waiting for something like the CWN to come along for many years,” Tobacco Creek watershed chair Les McEwan said in a statement. Efforts to

In Brief… – for Feb. 24, 2011

Correction:The building on the Reimer farm now housing Manitoba’s new model fish operation near Warren was in the past occasionally used for chicken rearing, but was most recently used to store farm machinery. A story in our Feb. 17 issue identified the facility as a former chicken barn. – Staff Food rights:India continues to face


Resilience Key To Survival

Modern industrial agriculture needs less efficiency and more resiliency if it’s going to feed billions more people in a world turned upside down by exploding energy prices and climate change. It sounds counterintuitive, but University of Waterloo Professor Thomas Homer-Dixon warns the current system is too “brittle” to withstand the challenges ahead. “I hate to

Organic Agriculture Is The Future

Does organic agriculture have a future? For some, such as well-known plant scientist E. Ann Clark, organic is the future. In a paper released earlier this year, the University of Guelph professor joined those who say that the end of cheap oil will mean the end of conventional agriculture as it’s currently practised. “(T)he future

New Filter Removes P From Water

“It’s affordable to point where we think individual farmers could run it.” – ROBERT GERVAIS When farmer and longtime conservationist Gordon Orchard first heard about a relatively simple process for removing dissolved phosphorus from water he thought it was too good to be true. After all, there’s no disputing there’s too much of it in