Peter Dhillon (left) speaks at the Arrell Food Summit on Nov. 14.

Future of food, sustainable business top agenda at Arrell Food Summit

Leaders and investors in Canada’s agriculture sector discuss climate change, avoiding food crisis

Reading Time: 3 minutes Glacier FarmMedia – Industry leaders discussed climate solutions and the future of Canadian food at the Arrell Food Summit: Pathway to Change, hosted by the Arrell Food Institute in Toronto earlier this winter. The eventt brings together agri-food leaders and experts to exchange ideas and learn more about topics affecting global food systems. In the […] Read more

File photo of steam rising from the top of a grain dryer. (Diane Kuhl/iStock/Getty Images)

Senate votes to shorten sunset clause on beleaguered Bill C-234

NFU calls for bill to be passed, feds to incentivize clean heating technology for farm buildings

Senators voted by a 44-40 margin yesterday to shorten the sunset clause on carbon price exemption bill C-234. Senator Yuen Pau Woo introduced the amendment on Dec. 7, saying it would align it with the deadline on the Liberal government’s heating oil carbon price exemption.


File photo of an Alberta wheat field. (ImagineGolf/E+/Getty Images)

Coalition seeks farmers, ranchers to join climate change forum

Farmers for Climate Solutions aims to gather diverse viewpoints

A farmer-led group is hoping to cut through the politics surrounding climate issues by bringing together a diverse group of Prairie farmers and ranchers for discussions around sustainability. “There’s a number of loud voices that tend to dominate the conversations,” says Ian McCreary, a grain and cattle farmer from Bladworth, Sask. McCreary is co-leading the […] Read more

Warm global surface air temperatures are smashing records and the planet also saw record-warm global ocean temperatures.

Global temperature records shattered

The data demonstrates a clear and undeniable climate trend line

Reading Time: 3 minutes It’s time to talk about record-breaking temperatures. Not daily records, not records for a city or a country, but global temperature records. You may have read an article or two about how September shattered the global record for warmest month. August was also the warmest on record, globally speaking. It looks like 2023 will be […] Read more


Two studies focus on nitrogen management and soil moisture conditions and look at the impact of different rotations.

Second agronomy cluster to receive funds

The Integrated Crop Agronomy Cluster will be publicly backed for another five years

Reading Time: 2 minutes The Integrated Crop Agronomy Cluster will receive more than $7.6 million for its second phase. Funding, which comes from sources including the Western Grains Research Foundation, the Sustainable Canadian Agriculture Partnership and industry partners, will cover a five-year period between April 2023 and March 2028. Projects will tackle everyday agronomic problems faced by farmers, as […] Read more

Wonky weather is the result of a shifting climate.

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


A climate change activist plays a violin in New York City’s Times Square as Manhattan is shrouded in haze and smoke which drifted south from wildfires in Canada, on June 7, 2023. (Photo: Reuters/Maye-E Wong)

Climate change made Quebec wildfires twice as likely, scientists say

Early snow disappearance led to earlier fires

London | Reuters — The fires that tore through the province of Quebec between May and July were made at least twice as likely by climate change, scientists said on Tuesday. Climate change, driven by the burning of fossil fuels, also made the fires as much as 50 per cent more intense, according to the […] Read more

A Nutrien advisor speaks with a farmer.

Cautious carbon optimism

While carbon offsets could be a boon for producers, experts warn the market is a volatile space with many risks to consider

Reading Time: 5 minutes Glacier FarmMedia – The message may go something like this: farmers live in a carbon-priced world and it’s time they started making that a positive, not a negative. Sign this contract, plant a cover crop and, based on the resulting carbon offsets, make a little money off some corporation’s environmental goals. But the landscape around […] Read more


For longer duration events, the climate change signal tends to be weaker and more variable.

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

File photo of a storm cloud from the southwestern end of Lake Winnipeg at Matlock, Man. (IanChrisGraham/iStock/Getty Images Plus)

More than half of world’s large lakes drying up, study finds

Gains in Great Lakes, Lake Winnipeg come from runoff, rainfall

London | Reuters — More than half of the world’s large lakes and reservoirs have shrunk since the early 1990s, chiefly because of climate change, intensifying concerns about water for agriculture, hydropower and human consumption, a study published on Thursday found. A team of international researchers reported that some of the world’s most important freshwater […] Read more