Reading Time: 3 minutes There are larger issues driving food trends that should give farmers opportunities to open conversations with people in the food movement. The challenge is starting that conversation. Jayson Lusk, the head of the Department of Agricultural Economics at Purdue University, told the George Morris AgriFood Policy Lecture on the future of food that influencers are […] Read more
Big trends drive diverging high and low income food interests
Panel discussed the future of food and the widening disconnect between growers and consumers
VIDEO: Data needed to help Ontario lamb reach potential
Reading Time: < 1 minute Glacier FarmMedia’s John Greig speaks with Martin Gooch, who conducted a study for Ontario Sheep Farmers that looked at how farmers can get more local lamb to consumers.
Ontario’s sheep producers rebrand
Reading Time: 2 minutes The organization that represents sheep farmers in Ontario has a new name and look. The Ontario Sheep Marketing Agency (OSMA) is now known as the Ontario Sheep Farmers, effective at the Ontario Sheep Convention held Thursday and Friday at Alliston. OSMA’s board of directors made the change following a resolution at the 2015 annual meeting. […] Read more
Co-operative hopes to increase Ontario sugar beet acres
Industrial-use sugars could be used to create bio-based polymers
Reading Time: 3 minutes A plan to use Ontario-grown sugar beets for production of industrial-use sugars could grow Ontario acres of the crop by 30,000. The Ontario Innovative Sugarbeet Processors Co-operative (OISPC) was formed to investigate the possibility of supplying companies with sugars, being increasingly used to create bio-based polymers. The organization had BioIndustrial Innovation Canada (BIC) do a […] Read more
Greig: Federal tax backtracks aside, much of impact still unknown
Reading Time: 4 minutes The Canadian Association of Farm Advisors’ annual tax update showcased confusion and frustration at the federal government’s shifting plan to change how small business is taxed. “I was very, very offended by all of this,” said Kurt Oelschlagel, of BDO Canada, who was part of a panel on the government changes at the CAFA event, […] Read more
Dicamba label sufficient, Health Canada says
Reading Time: 2 minutes Health Canada will not be further regulating the use of dicamba herbicide sprayed on growing crops, as has happened in the U.S. The government agency that regulates pesticides issued a statement to Glacier FarmMedia reiterating its support for the current Canadian labels. The U.S. Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) last week increased restrictions on the use […] Read more
Butter stocks drive eastern dairy quota increase
Reading Time: < 1 minute Increasing demand for dairy products — including a need to build butter stock — has meant a one per cent increasing in saleable dairy quota, and incentive days from November to March 2018, for eastern Canadian dairy farmers. The P5 dairy farm boards, representing Quebec, Ontario, New Brunswick, Prince Edward Island and Nova Scotia, announced […] Read more
From hogs to hops
Quebec farm family focuses on supplying local markets with a variety of hops
Reading Time: 3 minutes When Francis Gagné’s family decided to get out of hog production, it prompted the St. Bernard, Que. farmers to go through a process to decide how it wanted to diversify. The family had some flexibility. It continued to grow traditional cash crops and with space for 50,000 broilers, there was cash flow. Gagné says they […] Read more
‘Do no harm’
Canada’s supply-management farmers have three blunt words of advice for our NAFTA negotiating team
Reading Time: 3 minutes Canada’s supply management sector is experiencing its usual trade-talk trepidation as the renegotiation of the North American Free Trade Agreement gets started. Even so, dairy and poultry farmers are relying on Ottawa’s assurances at meetings through the summer that the system of domestic price setting, and the high border tariffs that support it, will not […] Read more
Chair, directors named for Ontario vegetable board
Reading Time: 2 minutes The Ontario Farm Products Marketing Commission has named a new chair and four directors for the Ontario Processing Vegetable Growers board, with another four directors to be elected by growers this week. Suzanne van Bommel, a farm co-owner with a long history of work in the agriculture sector, has been appointed chair. The province dismissed […] Read more
A message from April Stewart, Country Guide's Associate Editor
