We have five grandchildren; three of them are what you’d call “farm kids.†They live on a family grain and livestock operation near Thamesville (by Chatham), and I suspect that’s where they’ll be until they leave home.
Photo credit: The Western Producer
The livestock sector is uncorking champagne this week: In Canada, gene editing has been declared safe for livestock feed development, and that’s cause for celebration.
The declaration, by the Canadian Food Inspection Agency (CFIA), Canada’s regulatory body for food and agriculture, means feed containing genes that have been changed through high-tech editing can be fed to animals entering the food chain.
Photo credit: agcanada.com
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We normally talk here about stories from American farms, and rightly so.
But this month, with some help from our European colleagues, we’re flipping the switch to find the story inside the troubled, complex European Union farm scene. Europe is a significant trading partner, and the drama surrounding farming that’s unfolded recently across the entire continent is alarming.
Photo credit: lovelygreens.com
Nowhere is the cornucopia of local food more evident than at farmers’ markets. They’re steeped in history, right back to when they were a popular outlet for buying necessities, not novelties.
Photo credit: Graphic Node on Unsplash
A five-year plan was once the norm in management. But even before the world started going haywire (i.e., pre-COVID), doubts were emerging in some circles about anyone’s ability to look that far down the road.
Enter the three-year plan. However, even that was a stretch.
Photo credit: Grain Growers of Canada
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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.