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
Category: Local Food
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
I suspect there will be a lot of angst over the new federal farm review and forecast – even though statistically, it’s a good news story. The report, released last week, showed farmers produced 96.5 million tonnes of grain in 2013. That’s a major leap over the previous year’s relatively dismal 76.7-million tonne crop, which… Read More