We’re in the middle of prime fruit and vegetable season. The heat and sun of the summer bring with them roadside stands, farmers markets and local food stores brimming with fresh, Ontario-grown produce. I, for one, as someone who supports local food production and values Ontario’s farmers, am in my element as I’m revelling in [...]

Farmers are looking at many different solutions for dealing with rising energy costs. For one greenhouse grower, the answer lies with a new technology, a thermal blanket installation, which is expected to lower his energy costs by about one-third.
Gerard Schouwenaar of Orchard Park Growers, a St. Catharines-area flower producer, retrofitted a 30,000 sq ft greenhouse [...]

Sometimes I wonder whether we’re actually hard-wired to be instantly attracted to bad news and shocking revelations. I see negativity often dominating our 24-hour news cycle, leaving the less sensational but equally important good news to fall by the wayside.
More and more people are now writing and reporting about food, farming, science and the environment. [...]

The following editorial was published in the Guelph Mercury on May 27, 2010
These days, factory farming is a term used liberally when people talk about agriculture.
Its definition seems to vary depending on who is asked, and I’ve often wondered what it actually brings to mind when people hear it. I talk to people in the [...]

Wind farming is blowing up controversy in many parts of Ontario these days.
On the one hand, it is being promoted as a green alternative to traditional energy sources that we desperately need to lessen our dependence on less environmentally-friendly supplies we have been relying on to date. It is also credited with bringing good [...]

One of the things I enjoy a lot about my job as a freelance food and farm journalist and corporate writer is the chance to learn about really cool new things.
The story below about soybeans, which I originally wrote for Ontario Grain Farmer and is published in the May/June 2010 issue, is one of [...]

There was a bit of deja-vu in the air along with the ash as I read in the news this morning that an airport-closing plume had made another appearance in Britain.
It seems a bit like old news now – but a few short weeks ago, the impossibly-named volcano in Iceland that had somehow managed [...]