Reading Time: 2 minutes Can you speak? Swine flu? I cannot think of a worse thing for this thing to be called. They say that since it has nothing to do with pigs, it has no actual effect on the hog industry. I really hate being at the mercy of this hog market crisis, and this really takes the […] Read more
Someone Sneezes, And Hog Farmers Catch The Flu
Moose Jaw Plant Closure Predicted By Smart Cattle Guy
Reading Time: 3 minutes Now if XL had not been allowed to buy Lakeside, and another buyer had been found, would Moose Jaw have closed anyway? Regular readers of this column will know I wasn’t too enthused about the sale of Lakeside Packers to XL Beef. The Competition Bureau decided that Canadian farmers would be well enough served by […] Read more
Whatever You Call It, It’s Cause For Concern
Reading Time: 3 minutes The last thing the struggling hog sector needed was a global pandemic named after swine. Although the origins of the disease outbreak in Mexico have not at this time been traced back to pigs, the paranoia that has grown as it spreads human to human across the globe has been disastrous for the pork sector. […] Read more
AFRP Payments Prove Disappointing To Many
Reading Time: 3 minutes Perhaps the government should have been more transparent about the AFRP budget shortfall and made an effort to explain it to producers well before it sent out the cheques. Cattle producers are now finding out what hog producers already knew a few months ago – payments under AFRP II are not what they expected. Even […] Read more
Sky-High Debt Imperils Canadian Agriculture
Reading Time: 2 minutes My advice is to lock in these low rates for as long as you can and build equity as quickly as you can. George Brinkman is professor emeritus in the department of food, agricultural and resource economics at the University of Guelph. This first appeared in the April issue of Canadian Farm Business Manager, published […] Read more
Checkoffs A Sore Point With U. S. Producers
Reading Time: 2 minutes When Benjamin Franklin noted in a 1789 letter to a friend that “…in this world nothing can be said to be certain except death and taxes,” he did not foresee the incestuous, billion-dollar-per-year commodity checkoff industry. If you farm or ranch in America, not even taxes are more certain than the beef checkoff, the pork […] Read more
PFRA — The Organization That Saved Western Canada
Reading Time: 3 minutes Editor, Manitoba Co-operator Over much of Saskatchewan it was common for farmers en route to town to become trapped in soil drifts across the roads in summer as by snowdrifts in winter. Men Against the Desert, James H. Gray 1967 Few us can imagine much less remember the conditions that brought the Prairie Farm Rehabilitation […] Read more
Freedom To Stand, Stretch And Turn Around
Reading Time: 3 minutes Maple Leaf Foods, Canada’s largest pig producer, voluntarily announced in early 2007 they would phase out gestation crates. Editors Note: Stephanie Brown is a founder and a director of the Canadian Coalition for Farm Animals, a Toronto-based non-profit organization focused on the welfare of animals raised for food. It provides AF readers some perspectives on […] Read more
The Answer May Not Be Blowing In The Wind
Reading Time: 3 minutes Upon further research one becomes surprised at the astounding and growing opposition to windmills and wind farms in Europe. The proliferation of wind farms in southern Alberta raises different perspectives, depending on whether they are on your property. For those that have commercial windmills on their land and have cut a good deal with the […] Read more
The Feed Industry Is A Leader, Not A Scapegoat
Reading Time: 3 minutes J. A. Davidson, P. Ag, PAS is a Livestock Nutritionist with Bar-D Agri-Ventures in Minnedosa, Manitoba A recent comment in Alberta Farmer argued the safety of the Canadian feed industry and its relationship to human food safety. It is important that the general public understand that the suggestion by Rick Holley (professor, food microbiology/food safety […] Read more