The Stepplers’ bull sales have been boosted by live streaming on social media.

Selling the farm life, byte by byte

Producers are turning to the internet to market their farms and their practices

It’s not hard to keep track of what’s happening on Steppler Farms, west of Miami. A quick scroll through their blogs, YouTube, Facebook and Twitter feeds shows pictures taken in the field, videos of feeding cattle, links to articles and posts on everything from beehive management to family birthdays. On screen, Ian Steppler appears in

pig on a fundraising website

Public rallies around loose sow

Within hours the sow had been named and a rescue fundraiser started

Pigs were in the Winnipeg headlines last week over the fate of a sow that had fallen off a livestock truck and was found roaming near Winnipeg’s south perimeter. Manitoba Pork says staff, representatives from the Office of the Chief Veterinarian of Manitoba, and the Winnipeg Police Service contained the animal and loaded it onto


Engage youth through digital technology. photo: thinkstock

Getting youth involved key to winning, says speaker

Creative, inclusive events can help build ‘winning communities’

What can agricultural societies do to rejuvenate their membership and help rebuild a sense of community in rural areas? Think of yourselves in a new light and reach out to youth on their terms, says Peter Male. Male took that message to the recent annual general meeting of the Manitoba Association of Agricultural Societies and


Popular herbicide may be linked to increased pathogen virulence, says Huber

Emeritus professor from Purdue University and former U.S. army bioweapons expert points to 
growing evidence of potential harm from genetic engineering and herbicide “abuse”

Don Huber may not be a big fan of organic agriculture, but he’s become a hero among organic farmers with his contention that glyphosate is less benign than its promoters crack it up to be. Huber an emeritus professor of Plant Pathology from Purdue University, isn’t backing down, even though some dismiss him as a


Why have hens in your backyard?

I spent my earliest years growing up in the north end of Winnipeg on Alfred Ave. My memories of that time are of a rich and vital neighbourhood life. We lived next door to Mrs. Lomow’s grocery store, which in addition to stocking fresh produce, seemed to a young boy to be a centre of

Telling your story

Cultures in which it is customary to eat pretty much everything but the moo from meat animals must be scratching their heads over North America’s squeamishness over so-called “pink slime” beef. Lean finely textured beef, as the industry calls it, has never been sold in Canada. Health Canada considers the ammonia treatment the product undergoes

Farmers urged to tell their story but keep it real

Ordinary farmers could help polish the livestock industry’s image 
by posting matter-of-fact video clips on popular Internet site

Corrected, June 8, 2012 — Livestock producers should seize the power of YouTube to counter the influence of animal rights activists. But ditch the PR and keep it real. That was the advice of renowned animal welfare expert Temple Grandin delivered at a sold-out presentation here last week. “When YouTube first started, about two or


Beef producers must engage the public on animal welfare

Animal welfare. These two words often evoke a strong response from livestock producers across the country who feel that their way of life is under siege by those who don’t understand them and don’t grasp what they do for society. One just has to look at a few headlines to understand why farmers may feel

Pink slime An object lesson for the meat industry?

With a long-term decline in per capita consumption — 94 pounds per capita in 1976 to 60 pounds per capita in 2009 — the last thing that U.S. cattle producers need is the current controversy over “pink slime.” And with the controversy in full swing, they certainly don’t need industry and political leaders fighting the