Reading Time: 3 minutes Over the decades since the Canada-U.S. Free Trade Agreement (FTA) and later, NAFTA, was signed, Canadian agriculture has undergone a significant shift. There was once a multitude of diverse local and regional economic drivers, but now we have a “one-size-fits-all” export-driven, low-priced commodity production model. Farm capital needs have skyrocketed as illustrated by the massive […] Read more
Judge free trade by what we have lost
Farmers’ share of food profits has declined as has rural Canada’s economy, while farm debt and food imports have gone up
Think a big new West Coast terminal is good news? Think again
Expanding storage capacity just helps the big grain companies depress the price paid to farmers
Reading Time: 2 minutes G3 has announced it may build a new grain terminal at the West Lynn terminal on the North Shore of Vancouver’s Burrard Inlet. G3 is the joint venture of U.S.-based multinational grain company, Bunge Ltd., and the Saudi Agricultural and Livestock Investment Co., owned by the Saudi government. It was given the assets of the […] Read more
Conference board’s supply management reform ill conceived
Scrapping the current system would require government to subsidize both domestic production and exports
Reading Time: 2 minutes The Conference Board of Canada embraces the mantra that “all growth is good.” Its plan to change supply management for growth is a prescription for weakening, if not eliminating, the three pillars of supply management for dairy production in Canada — production controls, import tariffs and farmers’ cost-of-production pricing — in order to produce more […] Read more
Are farmers the bait in Fisheries Act changes?
Reading Time: 2 minutes Agriculture Minister Gerry Ritz and Fisheries Minister Keith Ashfield seem to be using farmers as bait to get the public to swallow the changes to the Fisheries Act. By suggesting that the federal government is abandoning protection of fish habitat so that farmers don’t have to deal with red tape when they maintain their irrigation […] Read more
Alberta Agriculture meetings underline value of the CWB
Reading Time: 2 minutes Although the Government of Alberta is putting forth a celebratory mood regarding the end of the Canadian Wheat Board’s (CWB) single desk, its public meetings being held in January and February across the province are taking place in an increasingly negative context for farmers who must deal with the fallout from the government’s long ideological […] Read more
Cyber-Savvy Farmer
