Reading Time: 2 minutes Health Canada unveiled a new Canada Food Guide today that ends the era of the ‘four food groups,’ no longer refers to serving sizes nor specific amounts of food to eat daily, and replaces the former iconic rainbow with a dinner plate comprised mostly of plant-based foods. This new guide is all about proportion rather […] Read more
Eat plant-based foods more often, new Food Guide says
Six factors to consider if your soil moisture level is low
To date, all indications are pointing to a dry spring, given the below-average precipitation received in many areas of the Prairies this winter. There are exceptions to every rule of course, but a lot of farmers had relatively dry soils going into winter, so we asked some agronomists and provincial crop experts what factors could[...]
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It’s not soil ‘quality’…
Terminology can make a difference, and using ‘health’ rather than ‘quality’ is helping bring together different interests to a common cause
Reading Time: 6 minutes For three weeks every month, Ray Archuleta captivates audiences with a few handfuls of soil. He begins with two clumps, dropping them into water. The soil from a farm where the soil isn’t tilled holds together, while the tilled soil immediately disperses, indicating poor soil structure. Next, volunteers from the audience — mostly farmers and[...]
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Tips to help you protect your household water
The water that enters your home has a long journey from start to finish, and along the way, it can pick up a lot of contaminants. Once it reaches your municipal water treatment facility it is treated and distributed to the public. During this process chemical and physical processes are used to filter and disinfect[...]
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Watching for rain in Australia
Warren Hobson’s reservoir is built to hold 18 feet of water. There’s one foot left
Reading Time: 5 minutes The farmers were smiling. They were attending one of this country’s premier machinery expos in Gunnedah, New South Wales, and the weather forecast was calling for widespread rains across the region. In Australia, that is a reason enough to smile. Rain in this country is a precious and sometimes scarce commodity. Even a few millimetres[...]
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The pros and cons of tile drainage
Being able to remove excess moisture is a big plus, but there are a lot of factors to take into account
Reading Time: 3 minutes It wasn’t long ago that if you asked most Alberta producers if they used tile drainage, they likely wouldn’t know what you were talking about. A common practice in Ontario and the U.S. Midwest, it’s only in recent years that Alberta growers have warmed to this system in which subsurface tubes remove excess moisture from[...]
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Farmers would pay more for water from proposed California tunnel
Reading Time: 2 minutes Sacramento | Reuters –– California farmers would pay more to irrigate their crops under a proposal to build tunnels under the San Joaquin-Sacramento River Delta to funnel water to the state’s agricultural breadbasket, officials said Friday. The analysis released by state Treasurer Bill Lockyer said regional water suppliers and the farmers who purchase water from[...]
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Where science and politics meet
Massive irrigation projects are likely in Sask.'s future
Reading Time: 4 minutes In 1967, the Gardiner Dam on Saskatchewan’s Lake Diefenbaker was built with the potential to irrigate half a million acres. Today only 110,000 acres are irrigated and only two percent of available water is used. Study after study has indicated a huge boon for agriculture, industry and employment if the irrigation potential were to be[...]
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“Let’s make some food”
Canada has enormous potential to increase irrigation in Saskatchewan. So why is so little happening?
Reading Time: 7 minutes Using only 20 per cent of the available supply, there is enough water running through Saskatchewan’s Gardiner Dam at Lake Diefenbaker to irrigate half a million acres. The potential for farm diversification and value-added processing would add billions to the national agriculture economy and cement Canada’s role in feeding a hungry world. And the other[...]
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A message from April Stewart, Country Guide's Associate Editor
