Major and possibly expensive changes lie ahead for Manitoba’s 700 hog producers as the result of a new roadmap for the industry’s future. The Manitoba Pork Council’s plan released last week commits hog farmers to eliminate sow gestation stalls within the next 15 years. “Manitoba Pork commits to encouraging producers to phase out by 2025 […] Read more
Man. hog farmers pledge sow stall phase-out
U.S. Analyst Says Ethanol Policy Seriously Misguided
Reading Time: 2 minutes If the United States reduced the amount of corn required for its ethanol requirements by just one per cent, it would double Zimbabwe’s entire annual corn consumption and save American taxpayers $50 million a year. Bill Lapp, a U.S. market analyst, tossed those statistics out at the recent Grain- World conference in Winnipeg to illustrate […] Read more
Livestock Systems Should Be Biological, Not Mechanical
Reading Time: 2 minutes In Joel Salatin’s ideal world, food production would be local, farms would be diversified, livestock would gambol on pastures and regulations would be… well, deregulated. If you think Salatin wants to go back to the old manner of farming before large-scale commercial production took over, you could be right. At least the old-fashioned model was […] Read more
CBEF Teeters After Merger Vote Ends In Disarray
Reading Time: 3 minutes The Canada Beef Export Federation is on the verge of collapse after provincial cattle associations abruptly pulled out of a Feb. 17 meeting and took most of CBEF’s funding with them. The associations withdrew their memberships in protest after a special CBEF members’ meeting to vote on amalgamating Canada’s three national beef agencies broke up […] Read more
Chicken Farmers Accuse CBC Of Slanted Report
Reading Time: 2 minutes Canada’s chicken industry is accusing CBC of selectively using data to conclude that chicken meat in stores often contains bacteria that is resistant to antibiotics. Chicken Farmers of Canada says the CBC-TV consumer affairs program Marketplacefailed to make a link between so-called superbugs and antibiotic use on farms, despite claiming to do so in a […] Read more
Farm Programs Need New Direction: Think-Tank Report
Reading Time: 4 minutes About five years ago, a special committee reviewing Canada’s agricultural policy framework heard a novel idea from chair Ed Tyrchniewicz, former dean of the University of Alberta’s faculty of agriculture and forestry. Noting that roughly 60 per cent of government funding for agriculture went to business risk management (BRM) programs, Tyrchniewicz suggested spending more on […] Read more
Beef Export Federation teeters as merger vote ends in disarray
The Canada Beef Export Federation is on the verge of collapse after provincial cattle associations abruptly pulled out of a Feb. 17 meeting and took most of CBEF’s funding with them. The associations withdrew their memberships in protest after a special CBEF members’ meeting to vote on amalgamating Canada’s three national beef agencies broke up […] Read more
Is Your Food Sustainable? There’s An App For That
Reading Time: 2 minutes Take your iPhone into a supermarket and go up to a product on the shelf. Hold the iPhone next to the bar code on the package and take a picture. Within seconds, a colour – green, yellow or red – comes up on the screen, along with a single-digit number. The colour tells you how […] Read more
Bracing For Another Soggy Spring
Reading Time: 2 minutes Western Canada could see a lot of unseeded cropland again next year because of an excessively wet summer and a possible snowy winter. Up to five million acres in Manitoba, Saskatchewan and Alberta could go unseeded in 2011 because of wet conditions, said Bruce Burnett, Canadian Wheat Board director of weather and market analysis. It’s […] Read more
Livestock Traceability Target In Peril
Reading Time: 2 minutes A government-imposed 2011 deadline for livestock traceability in Canada looks increasingly unattainable because of “dysfunctional” premise identification. Provinces are all over the map on premise ID, which pinpoints the locations of livestock farms and is one of the three key elements in livestock traceability. Some provinces are making headway while others have hardly begun. “If […] Read more
Cyber-Savvy Farmer
