The CFA calls for all federal parties to make agriculture a platform priority in 2011.
Agriculture
Farmer Knows the Land
A Saskatchewan Farmer writes about the role of wetlands on sask farm land over the last century, as a sink and a source of water in wet and dry years. With the advent of larger equipment, farmers of that time did a more complete job of land development. When you read...
GM Foods on Alberta Prime Time
Frontier Research Associate Cam Dahl debates the merits of genetically modified foods on the popular show Alberta Prime Time.
Let Us Not Turn Our Backs on Science: Agricultural advances must continue
Regulations based on scientific assessments in agriculture are being ignored in order to privilege unproven opinion, belief and sometimes superstition.
Featured News
Promote Equity by Providing a Quality Education
Earlier this year, a group called Equity Matters asked the province to establish an education equity secretariat. They want this office to oversee equity officers working in Manitoba schools. Equity Matters wants to ensure that all Manitoba students are reflected in...
Why Frances Widdowson Matters
Frances Widdowson probably isn't someone most Canadians recognize. I'm here to tell you why they should. In terms of Canada's intellectual culture, Frances Widdowson matters because she is a classic and prolific academic. In a time when demagoguery easily flourishes,...
Report Outlines CWB Change
Agriculture Minister Chuck Strahl has released a new report outlining the changes he plans to implement regarding the CWB by 2008.
A Toxic Nation?
A recent Sun series made the case that manmade chemicals, although helpful in many ways, shorten our lives and increase our risk of contracting cancer, and that children are particularly vulnerable. But a 50-year body of scientific research does not support such claims.
Feds Muzzle the CWB
The Conservative government has ordered the Canadian Wheat Board not to spend funds directly or indirectly on maintaining the monopoly on western grain sales. This has caused an uproar on both sides of the stick.
The Wheat Board: To Vote or Not to Vote
A Wheat Board plebiscite at best will accomplish nothing and at worst derail the Conservatives’ promise of marketing choice even as it alienates their Western base.
Breaking the Board
A meeting between the federal agriculture minister and a bunch of farm groups to discuss the future of grain exports in Canada might not seem like a provocative act. But to the Canadian Wheat Board, it was likely considered an act of war when Chuck Strahl convened the...
Organic Food and Humvees Are Both Eco-Wasteful
It takes organic farmers roughly twice as much land to produce a ton of food, primarily because they refuse to use nitrogen fertilizer to replace the nitrogen taken from the soil by their growing crops. That means huge tracts of land must be used to “grow nitrogen,” either as cattle pasture or planted to non-food legumes such as clover and hairy vetch.
Fear Trumps Reason in the Politics of Agriculture
Without subsidies, quotas, tariff protection and/or supply management, critics predicted nothing but misery for farmers. Exactly the reverse occurred, according to a paper prepared by David Harris for Australia’s Rural Industries Research and Development Corp
Dual Market Denial
Ending the Wheat Board’s marketing monopoly and competition would not mean its demise. To believe that is to ignore history.
Farmers to Rally Behind Board
The Conservatives promised during the federal election campaign to institute a dual-marketing system, which critics say will essentially gut the Winnipeg-based wheat board.