Reading Time: 4 minutes The federal Conservatives’ proposed replacement for the Liberal government’s framework on climate change offers several shout-outs to farmers, in a document focused on green investment rather than current consumption patterns. The lead opposition party’s plan, launched Wednesday by leader Andrew Scheer, proposes to scrap the Trudeau government’s current carbon pricing plan, which imposes levies on […] Read more
Tories’ climate plan focused on green investment
Climate change has U.S. fund managers adjusting agriculture investments
Reading Time: 3 minutes New York | Reuters — After historic floods devastated Midwestern agricultural states this spring, some fund managers are evaluating how climate change will affect the long-term value of companies that make or sell products ranging from tractors to fertilizer. The issue is not simply the unpredictability of weather. Instead, fund managers say, they are struggling […] Read more
U.S. government report says climate change will batter economy
Reading Time: 2 minutes Reuters — Climate change will cost the U.S. economy hundreds of billions of dollars by the end of the century, hitting everything from health to infrastructure, according to a government report issued on Friday that the White House called inaccurate. The congressionally mandated report, written with the help of more than a dozen U.S. government […] Read more
World crop briefs: North Carolina losing crops, livestock to Florence
Reading Time: 2 minutes CNS Canada — Record-setting rain and floods in North Carolina caused by Hurricane Florence have destroyed the state’s poultry sector with 3.4 million chickens and turkeys reported killed. Pig losses are estimated at 5,500. Widespread power outages and flooded roads are making it difficult to get help to abandoned livestock operations. The state is home […] Read more
Canada’s ag output seen likely rising under climate change
Reading Time: < 1 minute CNS Canada — A new United Nations report suggests just how climate change will reshape agriculture by 2050 — and that Canada’s production capacity stands to benefit. International trade will play an ever-larger role in helping to feed people in food-deficient regions, as warmer temperatures and less precipitation will damage yields in many tropical areas, […] Read more
Community to ‘transform’ Guelph’s Kemptville ag campus
Reading Time: 3 minutes The home municipality for Ontario Agricultural College’s (OAC) former Kemptville campus is set to remake the site as an “education and community hub.” The municipality of North Grenville, which includes Kemptville, about 40 km south of Ottawa, closed a deal in December to purchase the Kemptville ag campus, with the official transfer due to take […] Read more
How big is your market?
We must get better at understanding that the world’s commodity buyers have a growing range of options
Reading Time: 6 minutes How big is your world? Geographically, this is an easy question to answer with great precision. The diameter of the Earth at the equator is 12,756 km. Its circumference is 40,030 km along the equator, and 40,008 km through the poles. Thus the surface area of our planet is roughly 510 million sq. km. It’s […] Read more
Taking charge of climate
Changing weather is hitting these B.C. farmers hard. Now they’re fighting back
Reading Time: 8 minutes Standing at the window in his kitchen, Fort Fraser, B.C. rancher Wayne Ray watches the heavy grey clouds and he shakes his head. It’s July — haying season — but the rain won’t let him get at it. Ray is lucky. He hasn’t yet cut his hay yet, so at least it isn’t laying in […] Read more
The carbon tax
Farmers see themselves as the good guys in the carbon debate, with good reason. Is agriculture going to pay anyway?
Reading Time: 13 minutes It had been another frigid day in Manitoba, snow swirling as farmers and ranchers gathered at a downtown hotel, but once inside it didn’t take long for the temperature to rise. They’d gathered for Keystone Agricultural Producers annual general meeting, where one issue outpaced the rest — carbon pricing. It was standing room only, with […] Read more
‘Doomsday’ seed vault entrance repaired after thaw of Arctic ice
Reading Time: 2 minutes Oslo | Reuters — Norway is repairing the entrance of a “doomsday” seed vault on an Arctic island after an unexpected thaw of permafrost let water into a building meant as a deep freeze to safeguard the world’s food supplies. The water, limited to the 15-metre entrance hall in the melt late last year, had […] Read more
A message from April Stewart, Country Guide's Associate Editor
