Reading Time: 6 minutes Surrounded by her parents, sister and brother, Virginie Lepage has a strong grip on Ferme Olofée, Quebec’s biggest organic oatmeal producer and processor. How big, you ask? In other words, how big can an organic oatmeal operation be? Well, annual sales are $9 million. That should answer some questions. This clearly is a young entrepreneur […] Read more
Building an organic oat supply chain for the future
In English, this Quebec farm’s name means to make speed upwind. No wonder
The gluten advantage
With $1 million on the line, this Quebec farm is betting big money on small markets
Reading Time: 4 minutes It’s a two-hour drive straight north from Quebec City to get to Tournevent’s Farm, owned by Guillaume Dallaire and Audrey Bouchard at Hébertville in Lac Saint-Jean near Saguenay. At this time of year, it can be a cold trip, but even in the summer when Country Guide first visited, it can feel a long way […] Read more
After milk quotas
French dairy farmers look for a way ahead after Brussels gives up the European supply management system
Reading Time: < 1 minute French dairy farms are in turmoil. France is the second-largest dairy producer in the European Union, and for the past 30 years, governments there had used quota to tie milk production to assigned farm regions. But then Brussels pulled the plug on the EU quota system in 2015, and now decisions about where and how […] Read more
The most hated dairy farm in France
Milk After Quotas: Some dairy farms in southern France are facing an existential crisis
Reading Time: 4 minutes The least we can say is that Michel Welter, director general of France’s biggest dairy farm, is a tough cookie. At 51, this former dairy producer works not only under daily pressure from the citizens of his village, Abbeville, located in northern France, but from the whole country for having built an “industrial farm” of […] Read more
Organic milk: 1,000 farms for one cow
Milk After Quotas: In the past decade, Biolait has seen its production double in size
Reading Time: 2 minutes When I meet him at their brand new headquarters in Saffré, a village in western France, it’s clear Théofile Jouve, director general of Biolait is a proud man. “In 2013, when the price of conventional milk was almost the same as organic milk, we had 60 farmers ask to be part of our business,” he […] Read more
Setting their own quota
Milk After Quotas: Milk producers find more success with cheese
Reading Time: 3 minutes Jean-Marie Guinchard looks across his ancestral farm located at la Sommette, a hamlet near the Swiss border. “We are cheese producers before being milk producers,” he tells me. “That’s saved us because we get a much higher return than conventional milk.” With his herd of 160 milking cows of the Montbéliarde breed, the 58 year […] Read more
White Revolution 2.0
While Canada and the U.S. clash over NAFTA, Cargill, Nestlé and other global dairy giants are pumping their money into India
Reading Time: 7 minutes India is the world’s largest dairy producer, thanks to the “White Revolution” that it launched shortly after the country’s independence in 1947, when it first gave itself the goal of replacing dairy imports and promoting self-sufficiency. Now, the country has embarked on a White Revolution 2.0 that will keep its borders closed to imports of […] Read more
Large, commercial… and organic
Agri-Fusion says its choice to go organic is a business no-brainer, with a collaborative new management design to make sure it pays
Reading Time: 6 minutes Agri-Fusion’s four owners of Quebec largest organic farm never looked back at their choice to go organic. Whether it’s wheat, corn, soybeans, beans or peas, organic crops earn them twice as much per acre as conventional crops, and they cost much less to produce. It’s a point I heard again from 67-year-old Gilles Audette, one […] Read more
The slow death of the Green Revolution
Even as the negative impacts of the great Green Revolution pile up, there is hope
Reading Time: 7 minutes It saved one billion people from starvation. It won a Nobel peace prize for its founder, and it transformed India, all by discovering new varieties of high-yield rice and wheat, and new ways of growing them. Yet today, 50 years later, the Green Revolution is sputtering. Those high-yield crops have touched off ecological disasters, and […] Read more
Feeding the Indian tiger
Move over China. Food sales to India are set to roar
Reading Time: 5 minutes “The Indians are crazy for red lentils… potential sales are incredible,” says Lance Walker, head of Lazer Enterprises Inc. in Borden, Sask. Walker was working in a trade show booth as he told me this, one of the representatives of the 23 Canadian businesses that were participating at the 31st Aahar Food Hospitality Trade Fair […] Read more
A message from April Stewart, Country Guide's Associate Editor
