Reading Time: 3 minutes It was the usual day. Get up early, study the markets, check on the cattle, fix fence, make a sandwich, and then go out and do it all again. Going to town or taking time to do things in the home were privileges, stretched out on the horizon and always seemingly days or months away. […] Read more
An act of kindness fills the human spirit and ripples outward
They often come out of nowhere and when they are most needed — and their power to uplift is deep and strong
Food insecurity is not just a Third World problem
The situation in a country like Sudan is much more dire, but there are parallels to our own country
Reading Time: 3 minutes The United Nations has developed 17 sustainable development goals. The second one is “zero hunger.” This includes a mandate to end not only hunger but poverty everywhere and to achieve food security, improve nutrition, and promote sustainable agriculture. I would like to focus on food security in this column. Food security was defined at the […] Read more
Will boys always be boys? Not if we teach them proper boundaries
Around the world, boys are taught that aggression towards females is OK — it’s not, and must not be accepted
Reading Time: 3 minutes I was at the beach and there was a family on either side of me. On my left was a father and his four boys. On my right was a father and his four girls. The four girls played quietly doing make believe and building sand castles. Their father listened to music and watched for […] Read more
Temper tantrums: There’s way too much drama on some farms
A Facebook post on hand signals prompted an outpouring of comments from farm women subjected to angry tirades
Reading Time: 4 minutes This summer, a young female farmer posted the following message on Facebook: My husband is the worst ever at hand signals. Ten yrs. farming together and I still have no freaking clue what he is trying to signal to me. It would help if he actually used conventional signals and not his own secret signal […] Read more
The fall run is tough on calves but we can do better
The health problems seen in the feedlot don’t come out of the blue and careful handling should start at the home ranch
Reading Time: 3 minutes With the fall run underway, cattlemen and women are faced again with the challenge of morbidity and mortality in calves. By the time calves land in the feed yard, they have often been handled and transported several times. How they fight off disease during that extraordinarily stressful period is related to their age and weight. […] Read more
The making of a true – and enduring – love story
Out of a first tempestuous meeting and many months of shenanigans, an extraordinary relationship was born
Reading Time: 3 minutes He came into my life in his 11th year — a strong, beautifully marked buckskin gelding with a temper to match the devil himself. He had never been trailered or worked for his keep, but his eye was gentle and something inside of me whispered to give him a go. A gift from very dear […] Read more
The U.K. packs a lot of agriculture into a small space
British farmers need to get along with neighbouring communities, cut greenhouse emissions, and fend off cheap foreign competition
Reading Time: 3 minutes It’s an area steeped in history and culture that is also a breadbasket of diverse agriculture. The United Kingdom is home to 214,000 farms, which nearly mirrors Canada’s 205,000 farms, although the average size is 142 hectares (or about half the size of the average Canadian operation). And though the farms may be the same […] Read more
China represents opportunity for Canadian beef producers
Beef is increasingly on the menu for China’s growing middle class and the country can’t keep up with demand
Reading Time: 3 minutes The numbers are staggering — 854 million people in China are expected to be regular beef eaters by the year 2030. Despite their large land base, cattle numbers cannot keep up with the demand for beef that has been increasing by 15 per cent per year. What has happened? Where does the beef come from? […] Read more
Enterprising young farmers are the hope of a new Africa
The beleaguered continent has the potential to feed the world — if it can rise above the divisions created by its troubled past
Reading Time: 3 minutes The concept of a united Africa feeding the world is often considered. With a massive land base, Africa has an estimated 632 million hectares of arable land of which only 179 million hectares are currently being utilized. More than 40 per cent of these lands are in Nigeria, DR of Congo, and North and South […] Read more
The world has an eating problem — and farming is the solution
Whether it’s obesity or malnutrition, Canadian farmers have an amazing opportunity to be agents of change
Reading Time: 3 minutes “As a farming community we should be the epitome of health.” That was the closing remark of one of the speakers at the Nuffield Triennial Farming Conference in southern England earlier this summer. The speaker had been talking about obesity and food-related health issues, and how farmers could be a solution to this serious problem. […] Read more
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