February 23, 2012

John Masswohl Discusses Future of COOL

john masswohl

The World Trade Organization’s ruling on the country of origin labelling (COOL) legislation brought some small sense of victory to the Canadian beef industry. The excitement over that victory was short-lived however as producers realized that any tangible results stemming from that ruling would be a long way off. The potential for an appeal by [...]

Bill Donald Talks About His Term as NCBA President and Canada / US Trade Relations

truck feeding cattle

With over 200 days of travel as the President of NCBA, Bill Donald has been busy.  Donald has reign at the top of NCBA at a time that has been very good for Canada / United States trade relations.   With Canada shipping fat cattle south and Canada purchasing one billion dollars of US beef [...]

FarmTech 2012 – Gerry Ritz – The Realities of an Open Market for Wheat and Barley

Gerry Ritz FarmTech

Federal Agriculture Minister Gerry Ritz was in attendance at FarmTech in Edmonton.  He spoke to the 1600 attendees about the huge aoportunities in Canadian agriculture.  Of course of one the topics was the upcoming changes to the marketing sytsem for wheat and barley coming August 1, 2012 in Western Canada. There were a number of questions put [...]

South Korea Lifts Ban on Canadian Cattle Imports

South-Korean-flag

The Canadian Cattlemen’s Association released information this morning that South Korea has lifted its ban on Canadian Beef imports.  This news is long overdue and we have to realize that trade resumption doesn’t happen overnight. Learning from our agreement with China, Canada must complete all of the more detailed technical issues as quickly as possible [...]

TVO Puts Supply Management on “The Agenda”

andrew campbell

Talk about supply management and whether or not it should fit in Canada’s future continues to find a place in our media. To be honest, whenever I see a link for a National Post article relating to the system for dairy, poultry and eggs, I have a hard time clicking since I can usually guess [...]

Will Japan Change Age Limit Restrictions on Beef Imports to 30 Months?

beef

It looks as though Japan may consider easing restrictions on Canadian beef imports, as the first of many high level meetings have taken place in Tokyo. The meeting which took place last week inside the Japanese ministry of health and was focused on changing the age limit for domestic testing and import of cattle from [...]

The G20 Will Talk About Global Food Issues for the First Time – Robynne Anderson, Emerging Ag Inc

The G20 may be dealing with one of the most universally concerning issues its ever faced as it attempts to address the wild swings in food prices across the globe. The developing world is most urgently in need of help as the prices of basic staples have reached levels previously unheard of. Political unrest, malnutrition [...]

Why The Conservative Majority is Not Good For Ontario Agriculture

By Stewart Skinner,  (@modernfarmer) I found watching the election progress on Twitter exciting on Monday night (you could argue I should get out more) and I got caught up a bit in the overwhelmingly negative reactions to the Conservative majority. I’m guessing that most of the pessimism stemmed from the younger, more liberal community that [...]

Let’s Talk Pork…oink, Oink, OINK Rebound? – Andrew Campbell

Hog farmers across the country have had it bad for a while. Market crashes, disease and deteriorating consumer confidence have been major issues for pork producers for quite some time.  Running a hog farm is not easy or glamorous. They require an incredible amount of hands on management from farrow to finish. Hogs are hard [...]

The Canadian Flax Industry Looks Ahead After Triffid – Dave Sefton, Saskflax

The Triffid flax export issue with Europe was a major story of 2010.  All stakeholders in the flax value chain were impacted with great severity.  Farmers couldn’t move inventory, prices plummeted, and exporters had cargo in limbo.  The finger pointing was intense as everyone searched for the reasons that the previously approved trait had worked [...]