Originally announced last fall as part of the Local Food Act, Ontario’s agriculture minister Jeff Leal was on location today to formally roll out a tax credit for farmers who donate food to food banks. The “Food Donation Tax Credit for Farmers” gives farmers a tax credit valued at 25% of the fair market value… Read More
Category: Local Food
For Mary Carver, a professional home economist, it is hard to imagine — a 20 year old that doesn’t know how to crack an egg; a shopper wondering why he couldn’t find bananas local to Ottawa; a senior no longer eating eggs because her doctor had told her to stop eating dairy products. The stories… Read More
If you leave Dyce, Scotland in a northeasterly direction, you’ll no doubt end up along the North Sea’s coastline. You’ll pass Donald Trump’s controversial golf course along the A90, infamously known by environmentalists, many of whom opposed its start up and watched closely as Trump took his opposition to an experimental offshore wind farm to… Read More
Thousands of Winnipeggers and non-farming Manitobans will leave their homes intent on seeing and smelling where their food comes from this weekend. For the last five years, the Manitoba government has organized and promoted an annual “Open Farm Day,” which will be held on Sunday (a similar event will also be held this weekend in Nova… Read More
In what can only be described as the best news story this editor has posted all week, Farmery Brewery has announced its Farmery premium lager will be available in Saskatchewan. Farmery Estate Brewery is a Manitoba- (and farm)-based company that uses its own farm-grown barley and hops to brew its premium lager. The company is… Read More
It’s now easier to find Ontario-made Vintners Quality Alliance (VQA) wines at more than 100 farmers’ markets thanks to a new mobile map. Launched today via the Ontario Ministry of Agriculture, Food and Rural Affairs, the app features an interactive map — accessed either online or on a mobile device — and helps shoppers quickly… Read More
Waking to the clatter of wind against the house, a dark sky and a still-sleeping sun never feels like a good omen. On June 5th, the early morning grey was entirely worth the effort, as I joined the Alberta Farm Writers’ Association on their annual tour. 1st Stop: Lakeland College Our first stop continued the northward… Read More
You see them at election time, in particular — politicians jockeying to get a photo op with a farmer, diving into a plate of homegrown food or trying to support agriculture in some other camera-friendly way, such as driving a tractor. Politicians should be a friend to agriculture every chance they get, not just at… Read More
The devil is in the details of a new two-year pilot program in Ontario designed to bring local food and wine together in farmers’ markets. But if the agri-food sector has enough patience to see it through, I believe everyone involved – farmers, wineries and consumers – can come out on top. Starting tomorrow, Ontario’s… Read More
Do you have that very famous lyric in the Don McLean song “American Pie,” running in your head? You should. Organic farming — as we know it — could be over. No, I am not an organic farmer, but if I was, I would be very concerned about a new pricing concept being pushed by large-scale… Read More
With new varieties readily available, growing tiny crab apples isn’t your only option, prairie-dwellers! In 2008, the University of Saskatchewan released Prairie Sensation, an apple evolved to our prairie climate, and at roughly seven to nearly 8.5 cm in diameter, it’s no crab. Though apple trees are largely grown as a hobby, with keen interest in… Read More
My daughter Kate and I headed out last Sunday afternoon to Kitchener to hear about a new – and what I consider very different – food service being debuted at the storied Walper Hotel. Up the staircase through the doors of the second-floor terrace ballroom, 250 curious guests were lining up at more than a… Read More
If agriculture is going to work towards providing quality food for informed consumers, we can’t be throwing each production system under the bus. Conventional agriculture needs to respect organic production as a valid production system (and a valid consumer choice), and organic producers need to stop vilifying conventional production and using misleading and down-right false… Read More
The picture to the left was shared with me by Cami Ryan. Several thoughts and rants come to mind as I look at this marketing campaign. Has marketing always been this dishonest? Have consumers always been so led astray? Are we all just pawns in the game of food marketing? I find it quite ironic… Read More
Combine living and working in the “information age” with the greatest variety of choice the consumer has ever seen and you’ve got yourself a unique set of first-world problems. For the farmer, that essentially boils down to marketing problems. There is not only a large volume of information available to the consumer, but a demand… Read More