Reading Time: 2 minutes Testing has confirmed levels of clubroot capable of producing disease in two soil samples collected from Manitoba canola fields last year, provincial officials say. "It is significant in that we can no longer consider ourselves free of clubroot in Manitoba," said Holly Derksen, a plant pathologist with Manitoba Agriculture, Food and Rural Initiatives’ soils and […] Read more
Clubroot found in Manitoba soils
WFP hails Canada for leadership role in food security pact
Reading Time: 2 minutes Canada has won high praise from a senior official with the United Nations’ World Food Programme for becoming one of the first countries to make its minimum pledge to annual food aid up front in a new international treaty. "Canada is one of the strongest supporters of the World Food Programme," said Pedro Medrano Rojas, […] Read more
CWB says controversial ad met its objective
Reading Time: 2 minutes The chief strategy officer for CWB says the agency stands by its controversial ad depicting a cowgirl stuck on a fence, saying most people like it. "We’ve got more feedback than I ever expected," said Dayna Spiring about the ad that has been running in farm newspapers in recent weeks. Spiring acknowledged there have been […] Read more
Man. beef processor moves on federal upgrade
Reading Time: 2 minutes If Calvin Vaags has his way, Manitoba will have a federally inspected ruminant slaughter plant capable of handling 1,000 head per week up and running within a year. After three years of preparation, work has started on a $13 million expansion at Plains Processors, a small processing plant with a capacity of 80 head per […] Read more
From Ethiopia: Aid agencies focus on helping others to help themselves
Reading Time: 4 minutes It was a gift with strings attached, but that was just fine with Bekelech Basa. The single mother of six children from this small community about five hours southwest of Addis Ababa was given a goat on the condition that she give up its first-born kid. It’s just one example of how aid is changing. […] Read more
In Ethiopia: Pivotal to survival, donkeys get no respect
Reading Time: 2 minutes If author Anna Sewell were alive today, chances are she’d be writing a follow to her best-selling novel Black Beauty about the plight of Addis and Ababa — donkeys in Ethiopia. Her 1877 story about a horse raised awareness of the inhumane treatment of horses in England and sold 50 million copies worldwide. It is […] Read more
In Ethiopia: Agricultural growth a multifaceted challenge
Reading Time: 4 minutes With nearly 50 per cent of Ethiopia’s GDP rooted in agriculture, it goes without saying that growing the industry is its best short-term hope of boosting the economy. After all, between 80 and 90 per cent of Ethiopians farm for a living. It has the highest per capita density of cattle in Africa and is […] Read more
In Ethiopia: Conservation gospel falls on fertile soil
Reading Time: 4 minutes A row of derelict tractors on an abandoned state farm is a fitting reminder that industrialized agriculture has a checkered future in this populous East African country. With their faded red paint, gutted engines and rotting tires gradually being swallowed by the prickly underbrush, these 1970s-vintage symbols of progressive agriculture represent a technology that has […] Read more
In Ethiopia: Too many people, too little land and a changing climate
Reading Time: 4 minutes The highway southwest of Addis Ababa to Wolayto-Soddo is wide and smooth, but there is no such thing in Ethiopia as setting the cruise control and just cruising, as one would expect to do on the wide open Canadian Prairies. With nearly 80 million people, Ethiopia is densely populated and most of its people live […] Read more
In Ethiopia: First impressions of a far-off land
Reading Time: 4 minutes The sun was just peeking above the horizon as the Boeing 777 banked south just over Cairo, Egypt and headed for Addis Ababa, the Ethiopian capital that serves as the hub for all of Africa. We’d been travelling ahead in time, losing a night as we left Washington, D.C. at around 11 a.m. on Saturday, […] Read more
A message from April Stewart, Country Guide's Associate Editor
