Reading Time: < 1 minute The Troubleshooting Shelf Life workshop takes place Jan. 10 in Lacombe and April 11 in Airdrie. The workshop is aimed at producers who sell at farmers markets or directly to consumers and “who want to understand food quality issues and how to determine the shelf life of food products.” Topics include defining what food quality […] Read more
Learn the ins and outs of shelf life
Workshops scheduled for Jan. 10 and April 11
Ghosts get elbowed aside on Pizza Night in Rowley
Reading Time: 3 minutes Whenever Rowley has faced oblivion, locals have always come up with a plan — sometimes mischievous ones — to save their dusty locale on the central Alberta prairie. The hamlet, located 38 kilometres north of Drumheller, was fading away in the mid-1970s, when a group of men staged the now famous break-and-enter party into a […] Read more
Food bank drive collects millions of meals
Reading Time: < 1 minute The recently concluded FCC Drive Away Hunger collected enough food for 6.7 million meals, far surpassing this year’s goal. The donated food was given to food banks, which assist 850,000 Canadians every month, with children accounting for 36 per cent of that number. There are more than 500 food banks in the country, with about […] Read more
Where’s the beef? Increasingly, it’s in the premium product section
Leave the lower-end market to other meats and ‘come to terms’ with the global push to reduce meat consumption, says ‘Dr. Food’
Reading Time: 3 minutes The beef sector needs to position its meat as a premium product and forget about trying to duke it out with farmed fish and commercial chicken production, says one of the world’s best-known food-marketing experts. Fish and chicken are “the two big meats” because they have the best feed conversion ratios, David Hughes said at […] Read more
Travel exposes you to foods you never imagined existed
World cuisine is incredibly varied, and sometimes it takes an iron stomach to avoid offending your hosts
Reading Time: 4 minutes The inflight magazine in front of me was titled “The Taste of Travel.” I started to laugh because not all experiences when travelling leave a good taste in your mouth. There were some that were particularly challenging and good manners dictate that one never offends the host by passing on a dish. The setting was […] Read more
Explaining agriculture — one sign at a time
Reading Time: < 1 minute Consumer interest in how food is produced is at an all-time high — but most people don’t really know what they’re looking at when driving through farm country. But Agriculture for Life has come up with an innovative campaign called ‘What’s in the Field?’ to address that. The idea is simple: Producers register on the Ag […] Read more
‘Three times a day, you need a farmer’ — a phrase that says a lot
It’s not just the food we produce — farming is much deeper and more meaningful than that
Reading Time: 3 minutes My grandfather used to say, “Once in your life you need a doctor, lawyer, policeman, or preacher but every day — three times a day — you need a farmer.” To some this may be a catchy phrase but to others it has a deeper meaning. We were working on a school project, Grandpa and […] Read more
Schoepp: The short and sweet of who we are and what we eat
A survey of eating habits shows that tastes differ across the country, but food brings us together
Reading Time: 3 minutes We have a saying in our home that breakfast is the most important meal of the day — you should always make it home for breakfast. (When I was in my teens it was to make it home for breakfast and for the 3 a.m. milking!) Canadians do love to eat breakfast, especially in Quebec […] Read more
Family living on the land makes it through ‘starvation month’
Reading Time: 2 minutes Back in the pioneer days, April was known as “starvation month” because this was when food stores started to run out, and the new growing season hadn’t started yet. This isn’t a concern for most people today, unless you’re living off the land, like the Ruzicka family. The Ruzickas have pledged to spend a year […] Read more
Getting ready to deal with consumers’ expectations of the food system
New research shows the public expects farmers, food companies, grocery chains, and restaurants to work as partners
Reading Time: 3 minutes Siddhartha Gautama, the Indian fellow who we in the western world refer to as Buddha, once said: “When the student is ready, the teacher will appear.” And in this he was right, for when we are ready to learn or seek some form of knowledge, someone comes into our life to enlighten us. Enlightenment has […] Read more
Cyber-Savvy Farmer
