Reading Time: 2 minutes Ontario’s Farm Products Marketing Commission will run a vote for the province’s oats and barley growers starting Friday, to decide whether Grain Farmers of Ontario (GFO) will be the growers’ voice going forward. The commission will conduct a mail-in vote from Friday (Oct. 31) to Nov. 17 to see whether oat and barley growers wish […] Read more
Ont. barley, oat growers set to vote on GFO membership
Ontario’s Gay Lea to buy Hewitt’s Dairy
Reading Time: 2 minutes A 127-year-old family-owned Ontario dairy processor is set to go co-op. Gay Lea Foods, the province’s largest dairy co-operative, announced Wednesday it reached a deal to buy Hewitt’s Dairy of Hagersville for an undisclosed sum, effective Nov. 1. Hewitt’s is an icon in southern Ontario for its dairy bar just north of Hagersville, about 25 […] Read more
Author builds a consumer connection to farmers with ‘local food’
Meeting Lynn Ogryzlo in the heart of Toronto’s food district, we wonder if maybe the chasm between farmers and consumers isn’t as deep as we thought
Reading Time: 5 minutes Bag-toting shoppers amble past me on either side as I snag a table near the bakery. It’s already 2 p.m., and the picked-through bakery racks confirm that it’s too late to get the best-of-the-best fresh food at Toronto’s St. Lawrence Market. Even so, the place is still a hive of food lovers. That’s because by […] Read more
Soybeans fight to reach full potential against cyst nematode
A growing problem with sudden death syndrome is causing concern for Ontario soybean growers, but one plant pathologist says it’s a manageable concern
Reading Time: 7 minutes It’s an in-field whodunnit — a burgeoning crop disease that closely resembles other better-known problems, but is its own unique culprit, with its own unique symptoms, development and costs. The first symptoms are a widespread mottling and crinkling of leaves on soybean plants, usually coming after the start of flowering, though in rare cases symptoms […] Read more
So close, so far
Farming in eastern Ontario takes a special breed
Reading Time: 6 minutes The area isn’t for everyone, Charles Forman tells me. Squeezed between three of Canada’s most densely populated urban centres — Montreal, Ottawa and Toronto — farming here is almost eerily anonymous. Even other farmers across the province or all across the country easily overlook the farming that goes on in eastern Ontario. Not that the […] Read more
It isn’t here… yet
Will Bt-resistant corn rootworm cross the border into Canada?
Reading Time: 5 minutes Growers in the western U.S. Corn Belt have a real fight on their hands, and they know it. Corn rootworm is showing resistance to Bt hybrids. From Illinois across to South Dakota and down into Kansas, the Cry3Bb1 protein that is the foundation of some Bt genetics is under threat. Researchers now say that pyramiding […] Read more
Corn losing the acreage battle
Across the east, farmers like Elliot Lowry are dropping corn from their 2014 plans
Reading Time: 5 minutes Be prepared to see noticeably less corn in Canada’s cornbelt next year as farmers in southern Ontario and Quebec continue to switch acres to soybeans. The 2011 federal Census of Agriculture documented a 33 per cent jump since 2006 in the number of acres farmers are planting to soybeans, and it isn’t at all hard […] Read more
A message from April Stewart, Country Guide's Associate Editor
