Whisked away for a prairie farm weekend
Connecting consumers and farmers has become a new imperative. Research from the Ontario Ministry...
Read Moreby Owen Roberts | Jun 22, 2012 | Global, Guelph Mercury
Connecting consumers and farmers has become a new imperative. Research from the Ontario Ministry...
Read Moreby Owen Roberts | Nov 21, 2011 | Guelph Mercury
To the things we hold dear, we tend to associate traits that in reality may not necessarily be so. Case in point: local food. Local food is local food, period. Its distinguishing characteristic is that it’s grown close to where...
Read Moreby Owen Roberts | Aug 8, 2011 | Guelph Mercury
With United States administrators having co-operated at the 11th hour to raise the debt ceiling, the jockeying has started to decide who and what will be spared from the reported trillions of dollars that will be cut to curb...
Read Moreby Owen Roberts | Jun 20, 2011 | Guelph Mercury
As the global population grows and questions arise about farmers’ ability to feed everyone, questions are also arising about their moral obligation to do so — particularly in light of new possibilities that are emerging for them...
Read Moreby Owen Roberts | May 16, 2011 | Guelph Mercury
Ontario Federation of Agriculture president Bette Jean Crews says she sensed a conciliatory tone and open mindedness among rural candidates in the recent federal election. She says regardless of their political stripes, they...
Read Moreby Owen Roberts | May 2, 2011 | Guelph Mercury
People vote either with their wallets or their ballots for people they trust. People trust farmers. Farmers rank high among the most trusted occupations. So maybe it’s no wonder local food, which farmers produce, has caught on...
Read Moreby Owen Roberts | Apr 4, 2011 | Guelph Mercury
You might not consider the creation of an insurance program a historic day in your profession or trade. But consider the plight of an Ontario farmer. A single animal in western Canada gets tagged with having BSE, and the U.S....
Read Moreby Owen Roberts | Dec 20, 2010 | Guelph Mercury
Our most traditional Christmas season flower, the poinsettia, needs to be manipulated for height, for more uniform shipping. This can be done with growth-inhibiting chemicals, which have limited availability in Canada because...
Read Moreby Owen Roberts | Dec 13, 2010 | Guelph Mercury
When it comes to warmth, rats and mice are like the rest of us — they’d prefer a cozy nest (however you define it) rather than the frosty conditions that mark a Canadian winter. So they move indoors and become...
Read Moreby Owen Roberts | Sep 20, 2010 | Guelph Mercury
Ontario’s Endangered Species Act is well-intentioned but needs some fine tuning, according to separate reports and statements from the Ontario Federation of Agriculture and the George Morris Centre. The federation is...
Read Moreby Owen Roberts | Aug 30, 2010 | Guelph Mercury
When stories about menaces such as giant hogweed and the western bean cutworm show up in Section A of daily newspapers, it’s time to declare the media is becoming more interested and aware of farming. I write about this...
Read Moreby Owen Roberts | Aug 23, 2010 | Guelph Mercury
The United Nations says 2010 is the International Year of Biodiversity. The nursing profession calls 2010 the International Year of the Nurse, recognizing the centennial year of the death of modern nursing’s founder, Florence...
Read Moreby Owen Roberts | Jun 14, 2010 | Guelph Mercury
It’s a special time of the year. Tiny crop plants such as corn and soybeans are poking through the ground, creeping skyward to capture the sun’s warming rays. And they’re screaming their little green heads off about their...
Read Moreby Owen Roberts | May 31, 2010 | Guelph Mercury
Ontario’s chief medical officer of health, Dr. Arlene King, says wind turbines are not a health problem. Some people living within the vicinity of the machines have reported dizziness, headaches and sleep disturbance. The...
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Owen Roberts is a faculty member in the Agricultural Leadership, Education and Communications program at the University of Illinois. As an agricultural journalist, he is the past president of the International Federation of Agricultural Journalists and a lifetime achievement award recipient from the Canadian Farm Writers' Federation. His programs and research papers have been recognized nationally and internationally through awards from the Journal of Applied Communications, the National Agri-Marketing Association, the Association for Communications Excellence, and others.