The Rosebud River Valley is home to native grasses, wildlife, birds — and some female farm leaders who have worked hard to conserve it.

STRONG STEWARDS: Women ‘a driving force’ in conservation efforts

Stewardship isn’t gender specific but female farmers are often champions of sustainable practices

Reading Time: 5 minutes Elaine Bellamy has known from the time she was a small girl — there’s something special about the land at Will Farms. “When I was a five-year-old girl, I decided to take a spoon outside and have a taste of the dirt,” the Rosebud-area farmer recalled with a laugh. “Apparently, I thought it was pretty good, […] Read more

The ‘milpa’ system (intercropping corn, beans, and squash) is a centuries-old growing technique used by Indigenous women in Guatemala. It’s an example of the strong stewardship focus of women farmers, says Trina Moyles, an Alberta author who has written a book on female farmers around the world.

Female farmers lead regenerative farming efforts globally

Most small-scale farmers are women, and they focus on healthy soil, water, and ecosystems, says author

Reading Time: 2 minutes [UPDATED: April 5, 2022] Many female farmers here are champions of sustainable farming, but their global counterparts have long been feeding the world using these management practices.  “From my work as a writer, I’d argue that women farmers were already prioritizing sustainable agriculture practices long before this recent shift towards ‘regenerative agriculture,’” said Trina Moyles, […] Read more


Regenerative agriculture is not hype, and has a strong carbon component and a focus on resiliency.

Schoepp: Pitting one farming practice against another benefits no one

Dismissing regenerative agriculture — or synthetic fertilizer — out of hand is not the way forward

Reading Time: 3 minutes The use of synthetic nitrogen is being debated around the world by farmers and scientists. Stirring the discussion further last month was an opinion piece titled “Nutrient Claims are Crap” written by Jaqueline Rowarth in a New Zealand publication called Rural News. In it, the agrologist took a run at regenerative agriculture, describing it as […] Read more

Shipwheel Cattle Feeders has been using rotational grazing for more than 40 years — its grazing land has about 50 per cent more soil carbon than nearby cropland.

Revamping carbon credits could boost regenerative agriculture

Alberta organization says paying producers for actual carbon stored would boost soil health practices

Reading Time: 3 minutes Glacier FarmMedia – A carbon offset program could boost adoption of regenerative farming but it can’t use cookie-cutter protocols, says the head of an Alberta organization that promotes the practice. “To try to standardize something that is fundamentally adaptive and site specific, and also based on a lot of innovation, it’s going to put a […] Read more


(File photo by Dave Bedard)

Walmart stakes big claim on Canadian sustainable beef

Retailer pledges to take over 680 tonnes in 2022

The Canadian arm of the world’s biggest retailer has put a number to its previous commitment to source certified-sustainable beef for its grocery business. Walmart Canada on Thursday announced it has committed to buy 1.5 million pounds of beef sourced from farms and ranches certified to Canadian Roundtable for Sustainable Beef (CRSB) standards over the […] Read more

Tailoring stewardship work to individual operations has been the key to the success of ALUS, says Vermilion-area rancher Sean McGrath, whose pilot project in 2010 created a surge of interest in the program in Alberta.

New grazing stewardship program for 6,000 Prairie acres

Program has a component to help ranchers adopt multi-paddock grazing and regenerative agriculture

Reading Time: 3 minutes After growing its acres by 20 per cent last year, ALUS has lined up two big sponsors for a new initiative called Grazing Forward that will fund stewardship projects on 6,000 acres of Prairie ranchland. “A&W Canada and Cargill will together provide $1.8 million to support ranchers in Alberta, Saskatchewan and Manitoba as they continue to […] Read more



There is substantive evidence that regenerative farming is the future, as our current system will only ‘sustain’ for a short period of historical time.

Schoepp: To sustain is one thing, to regenerate is something else

Sustainable agriculture has been a step forward but it is not the end of the journey

Reading Time: 3 minutes For the past decade the focus on food and farming has been on sustainable systems. To be sustainable means to meet production needs without compromising the future, particularly our future natural resources. To farm sustainably is to ‘do no further harm’ or to maintain the current balance and to accept a level of accountability for […] Read more


John Cross, who now ranches with daughter Tanis, began using regenerative ag practices when he took over A7 Ranche 35 years ago. But it’s an ongoing and evolving process, they say.

Regenerative agriculture is becoming the next big thing for consumers

As interest in how food is produced increases, regenerative ag is becoming a fast-growing trend

Reading Time: 6 minutes Consumers have latched on to a new-to-them concept that puts soil health front and centre — regenerative agriculture. “For farmers, (regenerative agriculture) is nothing new, but now we’re starting to see consumers use the term,” said Jo-Ann McArthur, president of Nourish Food Marketing in Toronto. “When we look at it, we see it potentially becoming […] Read more

(Valio84sl/iStock/Getty Images)

Tech firm aims to boost regenerative ag through A.I., machine learning

Terramera proposes to cut emissions, sequester carbon through efficiencies

A Vancouver ag tech firm is pitching a proposal to both public- and private-sector investors that would use Microsoft technology to help the ag sector “pull carbon from the air.” Terramera on Monday put forward a $730 million proposal for an initiative it calls the Global Centre for Regenerative Agriculture, which would oversee efforts to […] Read more