A year ago, University of Guelph professor Alfons Weersink's phone was ringing off its cradle. People everywhere wanted him to help make sense of the sudden global food crisis, which was marked by predictions of dire...
Read MoreWhen Pittsburgh-based U.S. Steel pulled the plug in Hamilton on 1,500 Stelco jobs last week, it underlined what happens when a sector is dominated by foreign ownership.If times are good, everything's transparent, united,...
Read MoreTo me, hot dogs define the point where farming and food go their separate ways.I felt this way long before last week's woeful recall of Maple Leaf hot dogs, which were rounded-up in Eastern Canada by the company for fear of...
Read More(photo by Grant Martin) Without sounding too simplistic, some would lay the economic problems we’re having at the feet of immorality. Society got too greedy — we overconsumed in many ways, and the chickens have come...
Read MoreThe definition of a fair price for food –and who determines that price — is elusive. There's fair to consumers, fair to processors and retailers, and fair to farmers. When one pushes back, the other one feels...
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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.