Reading Time: 4 minutes Many rural landowners in their elder years may remember the odd and captivating sound made by greater sage grouse males as they courted females. But the once-common sound — variously described as a soft booming, burbling or popping — has been rarely heard for decades as the greater sage grouse population fell to fewer than […] Read more
Zoo takes steps to save beloved, but highly endangered, Prairie bird
Alberta Beef Producers in line for major overhaul
Reducing delegate numbers, board size and meetings are part of proposal to engage producers
Reading Time: 4 minutes A year after the disappointing defeat of a bid to increase its checkoff, Alberta Beef Producers’ board wants to put the organization on a diet. The farm group is asking its members to endorse a plan that would cut the board by a quarter, the number of delegates by a third, and the number of […] Read more
Alberta’s new farm safety act gets warm response
New act exempts most Alberta farms from workplace rules, removes right to unionize
Reading Time: 3 minutes There were no surprises when the United Conservative government unveiled its new farm workplace safety legislation — and that’s one of the things that farm leaders like about it. “It’s making farming easier,” Alberta Canola chair John Guelly said in contrasting the new legislation with the contentious version brought in by the previous NDP government. […] Read more
Fundraising tour a timely show of generosity during a tough time for farmers
Three Chords and The Roots music tour hits all the right notes
Reading Time: 4 minutes Country singer Blake Reid saw how this year’s harvest was impacting farmers in his family and his community. Determined to do something to help out, he created a country and roots music tour called Three Chords and The Roots, with 100 per cent of all proceeds raised going to the Do More Ag Foundation, an […] Read more
Not bad feels pretty good for cattle producers this year
It’s far from a banner year but given how things started, 2019 has been better than expected
Reading Time: 3 minutes This year has probably gone better than most cattle producers in Alberta expected. “We started out dry and in a drought, and conditions were a concern early in the year,” said Brian Perillat, manager and senior analyst with CanFax. “But we worked through it and we’ve come full circle. “We’ve got really ample feed supplies […] Read more
New farmland trust aims to preserve good soil
Tax treatment key to saving cropland
Reading Time: 3 minutes [UPDATED: Nov. 26, 2019] A new and innovative effort to save prime Alberta cropland from being turned into another suburb or industrial site is close to becoming a reality. Grain farmer Kim Good and lawyer-rancher Stan Carscallen say the Alberta Farmland Trust should be a registered charity by early in the coming year. And they’re […] Read more
Alberta farmers grapple with a miserable harvest
There simply aren’t a lot of positives for many producers in the province
Reading Time: 5 minutes This year’s harvest was the season from hell for farmers across Alberta. Many will still be combining next spring, drying grain for weeks to come, and their marketing efforts will resemble a salvage operation. And while producers — particularly in central and northern regions — knew their crops were late in developing, Mother Nature did […] Read more
New grazing lease plan a win for producers, say cattle groups
The groups feared long-frozen rental rates would be seen as a subsidy and lead to a countervailing duty
Reading Time: 3 minutes Grazing leases are about to change for the first time since 1994 after years of work by Alberta Beef Producers and the seven grazing lease associations in the province. The quarter-century-old system could have attracted potential tariffs on Canadian cattle, so the changes were necessary, said Rich Smith, executive director of Alberta Beef Producers. “The […] Read more
Speaking with one voice is a win for farmers, says Team Alberta
New joint website is the latest effort by four main crop commissions to ‘amplify’ their shared policy positions
Reading Time: 3 minutes The province’s four main crop commissions have taken another step towards speaking with one voice. The quartet — which collectively has 20,000 members — came together four years ago to form Team Alberta when the urban-centric NDP came to power. “We found it easier to talk to the new people who wanted information on agriculture […] Read more
Sniffing out trouble — canines trained to detect clubroot in the field
Josie and Adi blaze new path for quickly determining if a field is infected with the devastating canola disease
Reading Time: 4 minutes Any dog lover knows that dogs can do amazing things. Add to that list the ability to detect clubroot in canola. “The idea behind using dogs as detectors has been around for quite a long time. Using them to detect crop diseases has been around for the last five years or so,” said Michael Harding, […] Read more
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