| The following column was printed in the Guelph Mercury on September 25 2008. Do we want to eat Canadian food? By Lilian Schaer Harvest is upon us and you can’t go very far without running across someone promoting local food. It’s everywhere – new farmers’ markets and road side stands, festivals and advertisements. Everyone, seemingly, is talking about it and there’s a plethora of new buy local programs for farmers with a dizzying array of requirements for them to meet in order to participate. Continue reading Do we want to eat Canadian food?  Much of Austria is covered in pastoral mountainside fields – beautifully scenic but largely unsuited for agriculture.
But in the mountainous northern regions of the Austrian province of Styria, some entrepreneurial farmers are not only making a living by farming on the alpine pastures, they’re also revitalizing rural communities and keeping ancient traditions alive.
Continue reading The hills ARE alive! Today, in Austria, we stepped off of our bus and into the middle of a postcard. High up in the mountains, the scenery fulfilled every stereotype I’ve ever had about this country. Cow bells could be heard in the distance. A babbling brook twisted alongside the roadway. Every home was a flower-laden chalet and, to the eye’s delight was mountain after mountain after mountain. I could have stayed there forever. What made it even more unusual was that we were touring an average mountain beef farm. I’ve been to a lot of impressive beef farms in Ontario but none have the view of these, to be sure. Continue reading Beef farming in a postcard setting 
An earlier post by Kelly talked about the changes in Slovak agriculture since the end of Communism almost 20 years ago. While many things have been positive, things don’t seem to be entirely rosy in the world of Slovak agriculture.
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.
Continue reading The grass isn’t always greener The following article was first published in Ontario Beef Farmer magazine, July 2008: It sickens thousands of people every year, killing some and leaving others with permanent health damage. But it doesn’t affect the animals that harbour and shed the bacteria, making the disease invisible to farmers. Now, a new, made-in-Canada cattle vaccine to reduce human risk of exposure to E.coli O157:H7 is coming onto the market in North America. But who should pay for this innovative new treatment? Continue reading A cattle vaccine with human health benefit – who should pay? Meeting the needs of a finicky consumer is hard – but essential for success in the evolving global marketplace. And it’s something farmers need to start committing to, according to a popular agricultural economist from Kansas State University. “We need to understand consumer needs and how ungrateful they are,” said Dr. Vincent Amanour-Boadu as he addressed livestock farmers at the recent Making tough decisions in tough times conference in London ON. “And we’ve talked about this long enough – now we need to start committing to success.”
Continue reading Meeting finicky consumers’ demands If producers don’t survive, the rest of the industry won’t either. That’s the blunt message Canadian Pork Council president Clare Schlegel is hoping the government will hear loud and clear. The Canadian livestock industry has been battling an economic crisis since last summer, when Canada’s high-flying currency helped sink cattle and hog prices and drive up feed costs.
Continue reading Our producers must survive | |
