rooster crowing

Shady chicken-meat imports have Canadian poultry producers riled up

Mislabelling chicken as spent fowl has allowed American chicken processors to avoid more than $60 million in yearly tariffs, say Canadian chicken producers

Reading Time: 2 minutes Canadian chicken producers are crying foul over shady American spent fowl exports. Last year, Canada imported more than 97 million kilograms of chicken meat that was declared as being from spent fowl — which is 110 per cent of the United States’ entire annual spent fowl production. “We’re importing a lot more (spent fowl) than […] Read more

Eleven producers and grain industry representatives recently visited port facilities across the West Coast, like this one in Vancouver.  Photo: Alberta Barley

West Coast terminals have a beef with railways, too

Producers who recently toured terminal elevators say every 
official they met said railways are the bottleneck in the system


Reading Time: 4 minutes Turns out farmers aren’t the only ones with a beef with Canada’s railways — operators of West Coast ports say inadequate rail service is holding them back, too. Sylvan Lake farmer Michael Ammeter was one of 11 producers and grain industry representatives who toured ports in Portland, Vancouver, and Prince Rupert for five days in […] Read more


Germplasm technician Laura Hoge shows how it’s done during a hands-on plant-breeding demonstration at the recent Lacombe Field Day.

A lesson in (barley) emasculation

Reporter's notebook: Pollination and plant breeding at Lacombe Field Day

Reading Time: 2 minutes The more I learn about plant breeding, the more I feel I missed my true calling in life. And a recent attempt at crossing two barley plants at the Lacombe Field Day only fuelled my secret ambition. I worked with Laura Hoge, a germplasm technician at Alberta Agriculture and Rural Development, in a machine shed […] Read more

Funding to replace trees killed by mountain pine beetles

Funding to replace trees killed by mountain pine beetles

Deadline extended for tree replacement program


Reading Time: < 1 minute Tree Canada has extended the deadline for the 2014 Alberta Mountain Pine Beetle ReLeaf program until Aug. 31. This program subsidizes the cost of replacing trees lost to the advance of this invasive insect which destroys native pine trees. This is the second year of the program to help residents, landowners and municipalities. The mountain […] Read more