Will Verboven

Reading Time: 2 minutes Parks Canada recently released a proposal to reintroduce bison to restricted areas of Banff National Park. The detailed process outlines a multi-year program to establish a breeding herd of about 100 head. If the plan is successful bison will be further reintroduced into other areas of the park. Stakeholder groups were consulted including the local […] Read more

Reading Time: 4 minutes The last few years has seen the Alberta government working through a laborious process to create long-term development plans for specific watershed areas of the province. The idea is to establish a governing process that will oversee how resources such as agriculture, ranching, energy, recreation, transportation, conservation, tourism and others will develop in the various […] Read more

Reading Time: 4 minutes Alone amongst the cheerleading for the new Canada/EU trade agreement was an angry broadside from the Canadian dairy industry. It feels sold by the doubling of quota for tariff-free EU fine cheese imports. The dairy producers feel it will drive small Canadian artisanal cheese producers out of business under a flood of additional EU fine […] Read more

Reading Time: 2 minutes Government ministers usually like the power of their office and any loss of responsibility can seem like a demotion of sorts. But I suspect the recent transfer of the Canadian Food Inspection Agency (CFIA) from Agriculture Canada to Health Canada probably came as a relief to federal Agriculture Minister Gerry Ritz. The transfer was done […] Read more

Reading Time: 2 minutes A recent marketing campaign by the A&W hamburger chain has seen the beef industry express some exasperation with what seems like misleading advertising. The chain is promoting its burgers as not having any added hormones or steroids, which implies competitors’ burgers do have such added products, and so there may be a health risk. Industry […] Read more

Reading Time: 4 minutes One thing for sure about the cattle and beef industry — you don’t have to wait long for news on some issue or other, and it can vary from hopeful to depressing. For months, the industry has been troubled with fallout from the country-of-origin labelling (COOL) law battle with the U.S. The market consequences are […] Read more

Perhaps the future of biotechnology is not focused as much on increasing yields but on continuing to reduce production costs

Reading Time: 3 minutes We have all heard the popular cliché about size being important but it’s a question that seems missing in the ag biotechnology debate — specifically plant size limitations. Speakers at a recent agriculture biotechnology conference spoke at length about how GM plants and other high-tech agronomic practices had increased yields for many crops by up […] Read more

Reading Time: 3 minutes A recent agricultural biotechnogy conference in Calgary has again brought forth the seemingly boundless opportunities in this field of high-tech research and development. The Agricultural Biotechnology Conference has been held for several years and has started to expand its presentations into other biotech perspectives such as forestry, energy, industrial considerations and others. That’s been a […] Read more

Reading Time: 2 minutes The branding of Canadian beef was recently discussed at a Canada Beef Inc. (CBI) seminar. The thrust of the discussion was the value of having a genuine all-encompassing “Canadian beef” label for both domestic and export markets. There is much to be said for such an approach, mainly that it fixes a familiar quality and […] Read more