Reading Time: 3 minutes Glacier FarmMedia – At some point during the pandemic, Sars-CoV-2, the virus that causes COVID-19, spread from humans to white-tailed deer in North America. In 2021, scientists revealed that 40 per cent of white-tailed deer sampled in Michigan, Pennsylvania, Illinois and New York state in the U.S. had antibodies for the virus. Surveillance of these […] Read more
COVID-19 isn’t over for white-tailed deer
The virus mutates rapidly in white-tailed deer, but here’s why we don’t need to worry – for now
Soil biodiversity deserves protection
Reading Time: 3 minutes Soil is the most biodiverse habitat on the planet. According to recent research, it’s home to 59 per cent of all life on Earth, from an insect feeding on the soil surface to a tiny microbe nestled in a soil pore. The same paper estimates that around two million species of arthropod (think insects and […] Read more
Agrivoltaics are Alberta’s energy silver bullet
It is possible to both foster solar power infrastructure and preserve farmland
Reading Time: 3 minutes The Alberta government recently announced a much-maligned seven-month pause on renewable energy development in the province. While the exact reasons are up for debate, one specific factor has been the desire to investigate ways to make renewable energy, particularly solar, more integrated within the province over the long term. Specifically, there is a real concern […] Read more
Opinion: Cropping with wonky weather
Farmers should have incentives to prepare, such as increasing organic matter
Reading Time: 3 minutes A farmer friend challenged me about what he considered alarming statements related to climate change. He sighed and said “a temperature bump of 1.5 C probably won’t bother me.” There is a difference between climate and weather. For example, the climate in July 2023 was 1.5 C higher on average than pre-industrial (before 1850) average […] Read more
Keep balance in research funding
Declining federal government funding means others must fill in to fill the gap
Reading Time: 3 minutes Many ingredients went into the mix that resulted in the extraordinary success of agriculture in feeding a growing population. There’s the ability of farmers to constantly learn and increase their management skills. There are also vast improvements in technology – mechanical, digital and biological – that have come from researchers in both private companies and […] Read more
How microplastics are making their way into our farmland
Across nine provinces and 22 wastewater treatment plants, the problem was universal
Reading Time: 2 minutes Microplastic pollution is a global environmental problem that is ubiquitous in all environments, including air, water and soil. Microplastics are readily found in treated wastewater sludge, also known as municipal biosolids, that eventually make their way to our agricultural soils. Our recent investigation of microplastic levels in Canadian municipal biosolids found that a single gram […] Read more
Opinion: War is expensive both on and off the battlefield
Big financial costs, big human costs, but also big agribusiness profits
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: 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