It isn’t just the war in Ukraine that’s forecast to dampen grain supply on world markets. Farmers – and other businesses in rural Canada – continue to be limited by expensive and unreliable internet access that undermines their efficiency. Image: CENG.ca
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The latest University of Guelph survey of farmers’ mental health in Canada reveals some worrisome results. And even more so for women. The good news is that it shines a light on the struggles of these very essential workers. Image: https://ontario.cmha.ca/intheknow
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Self-driving cars get a lot of media attention, but the technology’s been available in tractors for about 20 years. It’s allowed farmers sitting in the cab to turn their attention to other work. Now, John Deere has announced the industry’s first fully-autonomous tractor. Photo: Deere.com
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Farmers enjoy a high ranking in public trust polls, but they could be mistakenly blamed for rising food costs. It’s true that crop prices have been yielding better returns, but skyrocketing fertilizer costs take a big bite out of their profits “ causing some farmers to think twice about which crops they can afford to plant.
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In a rare piece of good news last Friday, the Ukrainian agriculture ministry bumped up its estimate of spring crop planting from 13.4 million to 14 million hectares.
But it’s still a drop in the food bucket for more than 800 million people around the world suffering chronic food insecurity, and forecast to worsen this year. Image: AFP, FAO, USDA.
Owen Roberts is an agricultural journalist and communications instructor based in Guelph, Ontario, Canada. He is a trustee on the Global Foundation for Agricultural Journalism and an associate editor (communications) for the Journal of Agromedicine. Previously, Owen was president of the International Forum for Agricultural Journalists, an agricultural communications faculty member at the University of Illinois, and research communications director at the University of Guelph. His programs and research papers have been recognized through awards from the Journal of Applied Communications, the National Agri-Marketing Association, the Association for Communications Excellence and the Canadian Farm Writers' Federation.