Reading Time: < 1 minute Agriculture is a capital-intensive business, and farmers often enter into financial agreements with lenders with the assets purchased with the loan used as security. “Unfortunately, farm business managers can fall into a pattern of simply signing documents, and not reviewing all the conditions thoroughly,” said Rick Dehod, agriculture farm financial specialist with Alberta Agriculture and […] Read more
Read before signing the loan agreement, says expert
Activists press Olive Garden on antibiotics, worker pay
Los Angeles | Reuters — Dozens of activist groups, emboldened by recent policy shifts at major U.S. restaurants, are demanding Olive Garden owner Darden Restaurants change its food and labour practices. Their sweeping agenda, part of a campaign called “Good Food Now,” includes calls for the nation’s largest full-service restaurant operator to strengthen its antibiotics […] Read more
JBS posts large loss, announces reorganization
Brasilia | Reuters –– Brazilian meat packer JBS posted a much larger-than-expected first-quarter loss on Thursday, but its shares jumped the day after it announced a corporate reorganization to bring together international operations. JBS, the world’s biggest meat packer, lost 2.741 billion reais (C$1.02 billion) on currency hedging costs and poor results on the company’s […] Read more
Olymel to expand Quebec, Ontario poultry plants
La Coop federee’s meat processing arm Olymel plans “major investment” to boost production capacity two of its poultry plants in Eastern Canada. The company on Tuesday said it would put up $10 million to install an air chilling room at its primary chicken processing plant at St-Damase, just south of St-Hyacinthe in Quebec’s Monteregie. The […] Read more
We no longer have the luxury of time in making changes
When consumers decide a livestock practice is wrong, they expect changes to be made immediately
Reading Time: 3 minutes We used to believe — and many companies still do — that we could maintain consumer trust by going through the exercise of a food safety or production protocol. We have discovered in this very tribal age of transparency, this is not sufficient. Consumers are expecting actions to be taken and are moving away from […] Read more
A+W books further sales growth, shifts bacon sourcing
Canadian burger and root beer chain A+W has logged a 12th straight quarter of same-store sales growth, this time following a shift in pork sourcing for its bacon supply. The Vancouver-based income fund on Tuesday reported gross sales of $243.8 million among the 838 restaurants in its royalty pool for its first quarter ending March […] Read more
World food prices edge up in April
Rome | Reuters — World food prices rose slightly in April, up for the third month in a row but they remained almost 10 per cent lower than a year earlier, the United Nations food agency said on Thursday. The Food and Agriculture Organization’s (FAO) food price index, which measures monthly changes for a basket […] Read more
Maple Leaf dishes up first-quarter profit
Reuters — Canadian meat processor Maple Leaf Foods reported a better-than-expected quarterly profit, helped by higher earnings in its prepared meats business. Adjusted operating earnings in the meat products segment rose nearly eight-fold to $61.3 million in the Toronto company’s first quarter, helped by lower operating costs and price increases. The company, whose brands include […] Read more
U.S. kills 39,000 turkeys in low-path bird flu outbreak
Chicago | Reuters — U.S. authorities destroyed 39,000 turkeys in Missouri due to an outbreak of a mild form of avian flu, the World Organization for Animal Health said on Tuesday, as officials remained on alert for new cases. State authorities also have begun a quarantine and taken surveillance measures around the farm in Jasper […] Read more
Farmers’ market app now available
Reading Time: < 1 minute Alberta Agriculture has created a free app for Apple and Android that provides up-to-date information about locations, times, and dates of farmers’ markets in the province. Farmers’ markets are the No. 1 agri-tourism attraction in Alberta, providing a great shopping experience where consumers can “savour time” rather than “save time.” The app, which cost about […] Read more