Reading Time: 2 minutes Union general William T. Sherman once famously said, “War is hell.” However you describe it, war is expensive. For some, it’s extremely profitable, too. Shooting wars aren’t the only type of warfare that are costly, deadly and often without a winner. In January 2022, the International Monetary Fund estimated the total cost of the COVID-19 […] Read more
Opinion: War is expensive both on and off the battlefield
Big financial costs, big human costs, but also big agribusiness profits
Opinion: Short-sighted decisions lead to prime ag land loss
It always came down to the same thing: the will of a council that had no will to protect farmland
Reading Time: 3 minutes Iread with great interest Matt McIntosh’s item in a recent edition of the Alberta Farmer Express, “Pressure increases on farmland.” These words in particular had a visceral effect: “Protecting farmland and natural landscapes, and thus Canada’s ability to produce food in an unstable world, requires co-operation and long-term thinking.” Also, “the problem, according to CAPI, […] Read more
Emissions reduction needs a lifeline
Canadian farmers can’t extract added production costs from global markets
Reading Time: 3 minutes Nobody likes to change, especially not when they’re comfortable and things are going well. But that attitude can lead to complacency and inertia as the world passes by. This is the delicate balance that farmers are being asked to strike, with little evidence that it’s going to pay them dividends of any kind. The issue […] Read more
Opinion: Why climate change isn’t always to blame for extreme rainfall
Warm air holds more moisture, but not all catastrophic rain events are due to a warming globe
Reading Time: 3 minutes Extreme rain and floods can trigger a flood of another sort — claims that climate change is to blame. But these claims are not always well founded. In our new paper in Nature Geoscience, we discuss what can and can’t be attributed to climate change after extreme rain events. We use the floods of early […] Read more
Schoepp: Forced farming
Autocratic regimes seem hell-bent on returning to the scary past by implementing planned agriculture
Reading Time: 3 minutes A troubling trend is creeping up on global farmers as governments control food production and eliminate crop diversity. In China, “non-grain” farming has become the target of the Rural Comprehensive Administrative Law Enforcement Brigade, or nongguan, which exercises agricultural administrative penalties and related inspections for the Agriculture and Rural Development ministries. The areas that farmers […] Read more
Schoepp: Tiny Singapore can teach Canada about food security
With almost no arable land, the country takes a high-tech approach to feeding its people
Reading Time: 3 minutes Will rooftop farming address food insecurity? Likely not, but the trend continues to grow in large urban centres and land-starved countries as the cost of food skyrockets and accessibility declines. Fellow Nuffield Scholar Jodie Mitchell sent a post from a rooftop garden in Singapore that supplied food for the hotel it was built upon. This […] Read more
What happens when the grain deal fails?
Economic and political unrest abroad will affect Canadians
Reading Time: 3 minutes Russia is using food as a weapon of war, one designed to compel Ukraine and its allies to cave to Russian demands for the open export of its own grain and fertilizer, and subsequently, the import of great quantities of cash for the Russian war chest. While there is a UN-brokered deal for the continued […] Read more
Schoepp: Farms need workers, so don’t exclude folks who are older
Dipping into the senior labour pool may seem a little odd, but older workers bring a lot to the table
Reading Time: 3 minutes There is no denying that farmers will retire in huge numbers in the next little while. The projection in a new report from Royal Bank is that 40 per cent of our farmers will exit by 2033. While that might create a sense of panic, a lot can change in 10 years and for now […] Read more
Schoepp: Some are demanding deep and misguided changes to farms
Reducing emissions or boosting green energy and indoor farming is fine, but controlling farms isn’t
Reading Time: 3 minutes I have been listening to regional and international panels addressing the future of food security. In many circles, the talk is of reducing animal agriculture, government acquiring food production lands, reducing crop inputs and alternative systems. It seems we are on the verge of trashing a complex natural ecology for non-food-bearing green spaces and vertical […] Read more
Schoepp: Farmers markets have become part of the community fabric
Regardless of farm size, there is an opportunity to connect with those who buy our food products
Reading Time: 3 minutes I recall the early days of the farmers market in our community as the leaders focused on untapped opportunities. It was the mid-1970s, and farmers markets were just beginning to revive. It was difficult to convince folks to go back to buying local produce and food. As the population shifted to buying in grocery stores, […] Read more
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