Reading Time: 3 minutes Overland Park, Kan. | Reuters — U.S. lawmakers and the farm industry were skeptical of the Trump administration’s promise to shield farmers from the rapidly escalating trade dispute between the U.S. and China, concerned about the lack of details in protecting the agricultural export sector now embroiled in the back-and-forth. Major farming states supported U.S. […] Read more
U.S. lawmakers skeptical of promises to shield farmers from trade dispute
Trump proposes US$100 billion more in new tariffs on China
Reading Time: < 1 minute Washington | Reuters — U.S. President Donald Trump said on Thursday he had instructed U.S. trade officials to consider US$100 billion in additional tariffs on China, fueling an already heated trade dispute between the world’s two biggest economies. Trump said in a statement the further tariffs were being considered “in light of China’s unfair retaliation” […] Read more
Walmart patents hint at future where its drones tend the farms
Reading Time: 3 minutes New York/Chicago | Reuters — Walmart’s patent filings hint that it may see a future where farmers use its drones to not only spot crop problems but selectively apply chemicals or even disperse pollen to bring shoppers the freshest and cheapest food possible. The world’s largest retailer applied for six patents last year on drones […] Read more
Farmers demand invisible Irish border, post-Brexit
Reading Time: 4 minutes Florencecourt, Northern Ireland | Reuters — Northern Irish sheep farmers like John Sheridan collectively transport more than 1,000 lambs a day over the Irish border for slaughter and shipment to shoppers across the European Union. At the moment, the process is seamless. But Sheridan sees a threat to his life’s work, his family’s future and […] Read more
Farmers seen harder hit by opioid crisis than rest of rural U.S.
Reading Time: 2 minutes Chicago | Reuters — The opioid crisis in the United States is impacting farm and ranch families more acutely than their rural neighbours, according to a survey published by the American Farm Bureau Federation (AFBF) and the U.S. National Farmers Union on Thursday. About three-quarters of farmers and ranchers surveyed said a family member, someone […] Read more
Customer focus drives lamb processor partnerships with farmers
Reading Time: 3 minutes Wahab Zamani’s family knows what it wants in a lamb. And family members go to great lengths, partnering with sheep farmers, to get it. The Zamani family runs Simcoe Street Meat Packers and processes lamb in Kawartha Lakes for its retail stores in Toronto. They specialize in “truly halal products” he told the Ontario Sheep […] Read more
C’mon, get happy!
‘Plastician’ Jen Moss tells us why happiness is the right goal if you really want to drive the profitability of your business
Reading Time: 5 minutes Making more money this year would make me very happy. But what if just being happier is what it takes to make our farm more profitable? Clearly, this sounds too good to be true, so I went to Jennifer Moss, the author of Unlocking Happiness at Work. She’s also the co-founder of “Plasticity Labs,” a […] Read more
The Catch-22 of oat production
Tests in central Alberta yield some useful information on N rates and the effectiveness of plant growth regulators
Reading Time: 4 minutes Linda Hall has a soft spot for the humble oat, mainly because she doesn’t think it’s really all that humble. “Milling oats are a high-value crop,” Hall says. “We’re seeing companies like Richardson buying up oat milling capacity, so the markets are there if we can grow the right kind of oat.” It all depends […] Read more
U.S. women own it
When we think ‘farmer,’ we often also think ‘male.’ Because it’s men who own the farmland, right?
Reading Time: 5 minutes The truth of farmland ownership is changing, especially the picture of who owns farmland in the United States, where the numbers are a bit clearer than here in Canada, and where the shift has been underway for decades. The questions are simple enough: How many women own farmland in the U.S.? What are the parameters […] Read more
Right from the farm
Farmer-owned Capricorn Bay bridges the planter-drill divide
Reading Time: 4 minutes The Prince family runs a large-scale family farm in southwestern Manitoba, where for years they have wished for a single, effective piece of seeding equipment that they could use for all of their crops. Now, they’ve turned that dream into a market-ready implement and a fledgling equipment brand. Their on-farm creation, the PPS planter, can […] Read more
A message from April Stewart, Country Guide's Associate Editor
