Reading Time: 2 minutes Paris | Reuters — France’s Danone said on Thursday it would double the size of its U.S. business by buying organic foods producer WhiteWave Foods in a deal worth US$12.5 billion, including some $2.1 billion of debt and “other” liabilities. The purchase will help the French company to pursue affluent consumers by adding WhiteWave’s popular […] Read more
Danone to buy U.S. organic foods group WhiteWave
Finding your farm self
How one farm is using innovative business strategies to fuel its passion
Reading Time: 7 minutes We hear much talk today about business models and strategies, and we read about new and innovative ideas to change and manage farm business. But what do the words actually mean? A “good idea” can be a proactive idea or even a reactionary one; it can be traditional or alternative. But it would seem that […] Read more
Wine, foreign content now covered in organic pact with EU
Reading Time: 2 minutes The deal that clears Canadian-certified organic food for sale as organic in the European Union is now expanded to cover Canadian-processed products with some imported ingredients — and to include organic wine. Canada’s Agriculture Minister Lawrence MacAulay and EU Agriculture Commissioner Phil Hogan on Thursday confirmed the expansion of scope for the EU-Canada Organic Equivalence […] Read more
McDonald’s to offer first-ever organic burger, in Germany
Reading Time: 2 minutes Reuters — McDonald’s will offer its first-ever 100 per cent organic beef hamburger for a limited time in Germany, as a growing number of global diners demand food that is more natural and less processed. From Oct. 1 to Nov. 18 McDonald’s will offer “McB” burgers, made with organic beef sourced from organic farms in […] Read more
Grow your own nitrogen
As the cost-price squeeze reasserts itself, those old ideas about producing your own nutrients might become new again —- which means the organic industry might have a thing or two to teach us
Reading Time: 5 minutes Near Oxbow, Sask., organic producer Ian Cushon spends a lot of time and energy trying to produce the key building block for plant life — his own nitrogen — because unlike most growers, Cushon can’t just spread some fertilizer and be done with it. If he wants to play the organic game and capture those […] Read more
LGBT on the farm
On these farms, diversity is good for business
Reading Time: 7 minutes Now 33, Otis Bell admits he’s outside the mainstream of agriculture. Growing up in Seattle, Bell next lived in Olympia, where he got his first taste of growing plants and gardening, and where he decided to get more directly involved with farming. “I think being queer made me take a step out of some of […] Read more
When being organic isn’t enough
Their consumers don’t just want organic, says Martin de Groot. They want animal welfare, cow comfort, energy self-sufficiency… and they want to see it all in action
Reading Time: 5 minutes With the milk from their 60-cow, mostly Holstein herd, Martin de Groot, his wife Ineke Booy and their family make their Mapleton’s Organic line of ice creams and fresh and frozen yoghurts in their on-farm dairy at Moorefield, Ont., shipping their winter surplus through Harmony Organic Dairy Products. What they sell is much more, however, […] Read more
A message from April Stewart, Country Guide's Associate Editor
