| ||||||
 | If we want to feed the world – and do it in an environmentally responsible and sustainable manner – organics won’t cut it. That’s the message the World Wildlife Fund’s Director of Livestock will be bringing to the AGCare/Ontario Farm Animal Council annual meeting in Guelph on March 12. Continue reading WWF: organics not the answer to our food problems  
Crews, previously a Vice President of the OFA, takes the helm of Ontario’s largest farm organization during a time of turmoil in agriculture. Farmers have been hit hard with higher prices for everything from fuel to fertilizer, as well as the uncertainty of a fluctutating dollar, an increasing regulatory burden and trade challenges. (Photo: OFA website) Continue reading New president at Ontario Federation of Agriculture Everything is still so up in the air that it’s hard to tell how the cards are going to play out with the current political crisis gripping Canada. If the government does change, what impact could that have on agriculture? The tobacco industry could be one victim of the turmoil. Continue reading Tobacco deal could fall with government Now that America has it’s new President-elect in Senator Barack Obama, what does that mean for farmers? That’s a big question not only for farmers on either side of the Canada – US border, but also around the world. Although I did follow the US election fairly regularly, I didn’t pay as much attention to the candidates’ agricultural platforms as I did to other aspects of the campaign. As far as farming went, I was more focused on what was going on with the Canadian election earlier this fall. So in an effort to get caught up and hopefully also formulate an opinion – and maybe even speculate on what lies ahead as so many writers are wont to do – I turned to the Internet to see what others are saying. And there seems no shortage of viewpoints. The following article was printed in the Waterloo Region Record on September 30 2008. Farmers aren’t to blame for rising food prices The global food crisis is starting to hit home. Even here in Ontario where a strong farming sector produces an abundance of top quality food and exports much of it to other countries, higher food prices are becoming a fact of life. The growth of renewable fuels – especially ethanol whose main ingredient is corn – and the concept of growing plants for fuel instead of food are being pegged as the number one reason behind the rising food costs. This corn, the argument goes, is corn that should be going to feed people and not cars.
Several farmers and farm managers that we’ve met on our journey so far have talked to us about a general decrease in agriculture in Slovakia since 1989. Much of that has to do with strengthening efficiencies, boosting production and evolving to a free market system from the old style of collective farming run by the state. |   | ||||
Copyright © 2012 Food and Farming Canada - All Rights Reserved | ||||||
One of the criticisms often lobbed at the ethanol industry is that using corn for fuel means there is less available for food. But a new research investment by the government of Canada aims to change that.
The 