Mary MacArthur

CALMAR, Alta. – The day after Christmas Wayne and Shirley Forsberg were picked up by a whirlwind and dumped into an international crisis that has paralyzed the livestock industry in Canada for almost a year. Until then the couple quietly worked, lived and raised their children on the small farm they started in 1965 southwest […] Read more

RED DEER – Government officials should not dismiss a mass slaughter of older cattle as a way of boosting cattle prices and possibly reopening the border, says a southern Alberta farmer. “To get our markets, we’re going to have to do here what they did in Regina in 1951,” said Howard Winberg, referring to a […] Read more

RED DEER – When Bill Dobson was nine years old he remembers going with his father to a meeting in his community of Paradise Valley, Alta., about building a hockey arena. The meeting was heated with each side shouting and pointing their fingers. The ‘no’ side won at that meeting, but on the way out […] Read more

EDMONTON – Canada will soon be one of the most important pork producers in the world, says the manager of an international pork company. Jordi Masbernat, a manager for PIC in southern Europe, said Canada is one of few countries with an abundance of land, high quality standards and plenty of feed. “If you ask […] Read more

RED DEER – It’s been a long time since babies and children were seen at an Alberta farm meeting, but more sleeping babies and squeaky toys might be what’s needed to encourage younger farmers to attend meetings. “Farming is all about family. If you want to have young families involved, you have young families,” said […] Read more

A deal has been made for the sale of Alberta Oats, one of Alberta’s largest oat processing companies that went into voluntary receivership in August. The oats facility has been sold for just over $5 million, said Don MacLean, a senior vice-president with PricewaterhouseCoopers in Edmonton. “We have a deal,” said MacLean. The sale has […] Read more

Sunny Boy, the breakfast cereal that started the day in thousands of prairie homes since the Great Depression, is expected to soon be back on grocery store shelves after a 10-month absence. The company that makes the famous Canadian breakfast cereal presented too good an opportunity to pass up for members of the Schroeder family, […] Read more

EDMONTON – Pork beats beef in terms of Canadian exports – 800,000 tonnes in 2002 compared to 300,000 of beef. We out tonne them in Canada,” said Ed Schultz of Canada Pork Inter-national, who used 2002 statistics to show a fair comparison before bovine spongiform encephalopathy upset beef exports. “We contribute two and a half […] Read more

EDMONTON – More Canadians are putting pork in their shopping carts than ever before, says a national food tracking agency. Tony Marino, vice-president of government and sector services with AC Nielsen, said pork contributed $913 million in grocery store sales in the past 52 weeks, up eight percent from a year earlier. This doesn’t include […] Read more

The Canadian Grain Commission has rejected a claim by a group of farmers that it knowingly allowed an Alberta grain company to operate without a proper licence. In its statement of defence, the commission, the federal agency in charge of grain regulations, rejected the claim that it was negligent in not forcing All Grain Alberta […] Read more