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
The most hated dairy farm in France
Milk After Quotas: Some dairy farms in southern France are facing an existential crisis
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
Eastern Manitoba ice cream maker closes shop
Reading Time: 3 minutes An eastern Manitoba dairy farmer who began producing a specialty ice cream with the farm’s own milk in 2013 has closed shop citing rising production costs. Lisa Dyck, owner of the Cornell Creme ice cream brand, began producing a line of hand-crafted ice cream in 2013, using milk from the family dairy farm northeast of […] 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
Jersey cattle numbers on the rise in Manitoba
Butter and cheese are back as part of a healthy diet, and so is the interest in Jerseys
Reading Time: 3 minutes Moo-ve over Holsteins, the little brown cow is gaining ground. Not since our nation’s centennial have so many Jersey calves been registered in Canada, says Steven Smith of Clanwilliam, president of the Manitoba Jersey Cattle Club. He says the breed came just shy of 10,000 registrations last year, breaking the record set in 1967. “The […] Read more
The brother and sister advantage: Melinda Foster-Marshall and Mark Foster of Jockbrae Farms
Just because they’re siblings doesn’t mean Melinda and Mark instantly agree on everything. But they have a system for finding common ground, and once they’ve found it, they commit
Reading Time: 5 minutes Mark Foster and his sister Melinda Foster-Marshall never thought they’d be farming together. They had different personalities and routes through high school, but they have created roles and responsibilities and processes that are allowing their individual strengths to create a successful farming business. Melinda has a degree in geological sciences from Queen’s University and was […] Read more
The brother and sister advantage: Tom and Suzanne Pettit of Misty Glen Holsteins
There can be a kind of magic in a brother-sister relationship that helps them run a better farm business
Reading Time: 5 minutes A small but growing number of brother-and-sister farms across Canada are rewriting the rules on how families farm together in a new spirit of gender equality. Even more than that, though, they’re showing the rest of the industry how to step up their productivity with new management strategies that let every member of the team […] Read more
Committed to better decisions
Trevor Cunning tinkers, tweets and tightens his schedule to stay ahead
Reading Time: 6 minutes Go ahead, just ask him. Trevor Cunning will share almost anything he knows about farming and his farm. He even calls himself an “open book” and he says there’s little to hide about the family’s Starhill Farms operation in the Ottawa Valley, between Vankleek Hill and St-Eugène. Cunning and his father Allen — who began […] Read more
Cool-temperature process extends milk shelf life
Rapid heating and cooling by 10 C
Reading Time: < 1 minute Purdue University researchers say they have developed a milk preservation system using a lower temperature than pasteurization, but providing a longer shelf life. The researchers found that increasing the temperature of milk by 10 C for less than a second and then cooling it rapidly eliminates more than 99 per cent of the bacteria left […] Read more
A message from April Stewart, Country Guide's Associate Editor
