Karen Briere

A new statutory holiday and a two-percent provincial sales tax cut highlighted the opening of a new Saskatchewan legislative sitting. The province will implement a February Family Day beginning in 2007. This puts the number of statutory holidays at 10 and makes Saskatchewan the jurisdiction with the most such days, alongside Nunavut and the Northwest […] Read more

Saskatchewan intends to fully fund its share of the 2007 CAIS program, the province promised in its latest throne speech. In the past, it has committed some money to the Canadian Agricultural Income Stabilization program, pro-rated payments going out to farmers and then topped up the funding once payments were finalized. In July, Saskatchewan agriculture […] Read more

Blue Sky BioEnergy Ltd. has announced plans to build a 40-million-litre ethanol plant seven kilometres southwest of Melville. Construction on the $30 million facility is expected to start in April 2007, with the plant opening a year later and ready to turn the 2008 wheat crop into fuel. The company announced last week a 160 […] Read more

VANCOUVER – A short trip just two blocks down Maple Street, off Kitsilano’s trendy West Fourth Avenue, through a cleverly constructed gate, takes you out of the city – sort of. It’s so quiet here that visitors might forget they’re in the largest metropolitan area in Western Canada. Beyond the rake, spade and pitchfork that […] Read more

VANCOUVER – Harold Steves didn’t choose to be an urban farmer. When the city moved out and houses surrounded his farm on the edge of Richmond, B.C., he became one. He jokes that he’s either the last rural farm in the city or the first urban farm. It’s a situation in which many farmers in […] Read more

VANCOUVER – Mike Jones raised 60,000 hogs and 250,000 chickens before he became a farmer in his own right. The North Carolina farmer produced livestock for the large corporations that made his home the second-largest hog farming state in the United States after Iowa. But when he was able to buy his own farm two […] Read more

VANCOUVER – Food security proponents admit they don’t always remember to think about livestock. A lot of the work done to ensure people around the world have access to safe quality food focuses on gardens and vegetables, which are crops that are more easily grown closer to or in cities and require less processing. Rigoberto […] Read more

VANCOUVER – The line between urban and rural is blurring more and more in North American cities. Many urban planners are discarding the notion that rural is rural and urban is urban and never the twain shall meet. They are looking at food and food systems as a way to achieve social, environmental and economic […] Read more

The Saskatchewan government has acted on about two-thirds of 220 recommendations put forward by a committee appointed to find ways to revitalize rural Saskatchewan. A monitoring committee formed from the larger Action Committee on the Rural Economy has examined progress to date and reported that 143 recommendations have been dealt with and should be taken […] Read more

Donna Welke has one major concern as she prepares to leave her job at the Canadian Grain Commission- and it’s not about her own future. It’s about the farmers she will leave behind when her 12-year tenure as assistant commissioner in Saskatchewan ends Dec. 12. “My major disappointment would be if no one replaced me […] Read more