One of the great things about attending the NCBA convention is that you get a chance to hear what some of the NCBA analysts an staff have to say about the industry. I was very fortunate to get a chance to talk with Gregg Doud. Gregg Doud is the Chief Economist at the National Cattlemans… Read More
Category: Ag Policy
This is my first trip the NCBA convention and I have been amazed at the scope of the convention. The first person that I had a chance to interview was Sara Brown, Livestock & Production Editor, Beef Today. I asked Sara what a couple of the main issues were in the beef business in the… Read More
I am finding more and more ranchers and feeders are struggling to find the answers to their short term profitability issues. I just hope that if ALMA has success there is enough people in the industry still to benefit from the hard work. At the Tiffin conference I really detected frustration from producers on how… Read More
Photo is courtesy of BugMan50 Dennis McKnight, The Innovators, spoke at Tiffin Conference 2010 about the ability of the Canadian beef industry to compete globally. Dennis has clients around the world who he assists in developing markets for their products. Dennis believes that Canadian beef can compete but we may need to rethink how we… Read More
I talked to Dustin Gosnell, Director of Strategic Planning and Corporate Policy, Canadian Wheat Board about GM wheat and the CWB’s position on the latest WTO issues. Agricultural trade issues are really sensitive and controversial issues right now. Never mind the trade issues that North America has with China and the other BRIC countries but the… Read More
John Phipps is the Host of the US Farm report and also farms for a living. He also blogs and writes for Farm Journal. I had the chance to sit down with John before his keynote speech at CropWeek and asked him about some of the things in the past that have affected farmers and… Read More
Richard Phillips is the Executive Director of the Grain Growers of Canada and he is a very busy man these days with all the things going on in the grain industry. Richard was apart of a panel discussion at the SaskSeed annual meeting at CropWeek. The panel discussion was about whether or not the grain… Read More
Yesterday, I was at GrowCanada Conference 2009 in Calgary and was very fortunate to hear Dr. Prem Warrior from the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation speak about agriculture’s role in solving global poverty. Dr. Warrior discussed the reality of global poverty being concentrated in South Asia and Sub Saharan Africa. In fact, 78% of the… Read More
Over the weekend, a story broke about the privacy leaks by the Canadian Wheat Board to third parties such as Revenue Canada and grain companies. The most controversial of issues around this is not the information that was supplied but that the CWB could not provide a good reason as to why the information was… Read More
This is part two of my interview with the President and CEO of the Alberta Livestock Meat Agency (ALMA), Gordon Cove. In this interview I asked questions provided to me by producers. I gathered questions from Twitter and Agriville and asked them in no particular order to Mr. Cove. I would suggest that many people at the… Read More
When an industry struggles financially, it becomes necessary to re-evaluate how business is done. The beef industry has struggled since the discovery of BSE in 2003 and the pork industry has felt the financial pain from the H1N1 pandemic. One solution being circulated in the coffee shops across the country is to make either of… Read More
I was fortunate earlier this week to meet with the President & CEO of the Alberta Livestock Meat Agency, Gordon Cove. My interview is broken into two parts and I hope that you find it interesting and look upon it objectively. No matter where your meat politics reside you have to admit that the Alberta… Read More
It seems that trade issues are at the forefront right now in Canadian agriculture. We have country of origin labelling (COOL) and a volatile Canadian dollar to keep us busy. We now also have a serious situation in China where the Chinese have decided Canadian canola may be not fit to enter Chinese ports without… Read More
This was originally written by Lillian Schaer on her blog “Food and Farming Canada“ This post is a continuation from yesterday€™s H1N1 topic that explored Alberta Pork€™s experiences at the centre of the H1N1 media storm earlier this year. The information is based on a presentation I attended by Lee Funke of Torque Communications at… Read More
Every stream of media has covered and analyzed the economic turmoil that the globe has experienced over the past twelve months. I have heard more and more that people believe that agriculture is immune to any downturn in the economy. Is there such a thing? Is it possible that agriculture is one of the special… Read More