Phosphorus It’s fertilizer, not a pollutant, so why not manage pigs in a way we can use it?
Reading Time: 3 minutes “It would be giving the animal a gene, which nature made a mistake by not giving them.” If there is one sentence that captures why the world’s first GMO pig never made it to market, it would be this comment from one of the lead researchers on the University of Guelph project back in 2001. […] Read moreShort-sighted solution to the wrong problem
Finding the balance on the scales of animal happiness
Reading Time: 3 minutes It’s been relatively quiet on the animal welfare front lately, at least as it pertains to livestock production. That’s a good thing, but it doesn’t mean the issue has gone away. In fact, two economists with Oklahoma State University believe animal welfare has moved from the fringes to the forefront of discussions over the future […] Read more
Solar flares could stir up
Reading Time: 2 minutes Don’t blame the manufacturers — or even the gremlins — if your GPS system goes a little wonky in 2012. It’s likely solar flares will wreak havoc with at least some systems this coming year as the sun flips its magnetic field, says Pam Wilson, a precision agriculture instructor with Assiniboine Community College in Manitoba. “Basically […] Read more
Wheat board outlines plans to compete after August 1
Reading Time: 3 minutes The Canadian Wheat Board will have sales programs for farmers who want to use them, the board’s director of marketing and sales told farmers at Manitoba’s largest annual farm show earlier this month. While details have yet to be ironed out, Gord Flaten said it’s really up to farmers to ask themselves whether they want […] Read more
Without January rains, one of two heifers will be sold
Reading Time: 4 minutes Manitoba Co-operator editor Laura Rance travelled on a media food study tour with the Canadian Foodgrains Bank in Ethiopia last month The highway southwest of Addis Ababa to Wolayto-Soddo is wide and smooth, but there is no such thing in Ethiopia as setting the cruise control and just cruising, as one would expect to do […] Read more
Finding ways to make group housing for sows work
Reading Time: 2 minutes Back in the early 1990s, when University of Manitoba animal scientist Laurie Connor first oversaw research into hoop-housing systems for hogs, the key questions of the day were whether keeping pigs outdoors through a Prairie winter threatened their welfare and/or compromised production efficiency. Connor told a recent seminar she was initially mortified at the thought […] Read more
From Ethiopia: Aid agencies focus on helping others to help themselves
It was a gift with strings attached, but that was just fine with Bekelech Basa. The single mother of six children from this small community about five hours southwest of Addis Ababa was given a goat on the condition that she give up its first-born kid. It’s just one example of how aid is changing. […] Read more
In Ethiopia: Pivotal to survival, donkeys get no respect
If author Anna Sewell were alive today, chances are she’d be writing a follow to her best-selling novel Black Beauty about the plight of Addis and Ababa — donkeys in Ethiopia. Her 1877 story about a horse raised awareness of the inhumane treatment of horses in England and sold 50 million copies worldwide. It is […] Read more
In Ethiopia: Agricultural growth a multifaceted challenge
With nearly 50 per cent of Ethiopia’s GDP rooted in agriculture, it goes without saying that growing the industry is its best short-term hope of boosting the economy. After all, between 80 and 90 per cent of Ethiopians farm for a living. It has the highest per capita density of cattle in Africa and is […] Read more
In Ethiopia: Conservation gospel falls on fertile soil
A row of derelict tractors on an abandoned state farm is a fitting reminder that industrialized agriculture has a checkered future in this populous East African country. With their faded red paint, gutted engines and rotting tires gradually being swallowed by the prickly underbrush, these 1970s-vintage symbols of progressive agriculture represent a technology that has […] Read more
Cyber-Savvy Farmer
