Michael Raine

SASKATOON – Little remains of the raw prairie that western farmers now sow to genetically engineered species of a chemical controlled monoculture. Nearly all arable land in the Prairies is farmed. The original grasses that once covered and created this now valuable soil survive in only the most remote sections of plains. In Manitoba there […] Read more

SASKATOON – Precision farming technology may be in its infancy but it is already spawning a new industry in Western Canada. The first equipment and software designed for site specific farming, such as field and yield mapping, came on the market five years ago. Since then, the industry of supplying the information and technology to […] Read more

LARONGE, Sask. – The grain piles high in the hopper. Harvest is late this year. Pass after pass over the field brings in what looks to be an average crop. It’s a fall scene like many others across the West, except this combine floats a metre above the soil, and the soil sits on the […] Read more

SASKATOON – The national unity train is back on the track, literally. A chartered train is scheduled to roll from Montreal to Quebec City, after it picks up western Canadians coming into Montreal on flights from Edmonton, Calgary and Vancouver. All this is in celebration of last year’s controversial national unity rally of Oct. 27 […] Read more

SASKATOON – Privatization in Ukraine doesn’t mean smaller or larger farms, but it could lead to more efficient farms, said the president of a major Ukrainian bank. Sarkis Simovjan and two associates from the Grant Bank, in Kharkov, Ukraine, explored opportunities for trade and development in Western Canada during a recent two-week tour of Canada. […] Read more

LINDEN, Alta. – In an era of larger trucks, higher speed limits, satellite-fed marketing information and e-mail, a wagon builder may seem out of place. But Robby Fyn, who practices the art of traditional wheelwright in this central Alberta town, has seen his business grow since he opened Linden Wagon and Buggy Works a year […] Read more

SASKATOON – Organic agriculture has come under fire in the past for lack of defined quality standards. So three of the 43 Canadian certification bodies have drawn merger plans in hopes of eliminating buyer uncertainty over quality and to give growers and processors standards to follow, in place of national standards still being developed. “This […] Read more

SASKATOON – “I saw it on Oprah,” said Linda Henderson. An essay contest to give away one section of farmland is one family’s solution to a farm debt crisis. Henderson, of Rosemary, Alta. and her family are giving away 640 acres of land for “the best essay on how owning ranch land in southern Alberta […] Read more

SASKATOON – It might only be in cartoons where the miniscule mouse can frighten off the planet’s largest land animal, the elephant. But farmers would be wise to heed the elephant’s example. In August a 54-year-old Fort Qu’Appelle, Sask. man died after cleaning a grain bin in preparation for harvest. His illness was diagnosed as […] Read more

SASKATOON – An international team of veterinarians will visit Canadian and American PMU ranches this year and next, with the aim of ensuring high standards of practice. Equine veterinary specialists from the United Kingdom, the U.S. and Canada will tour barns that collect pregnant mare’s urine contracted to Wyeth-Ayerst, the manufacturer of Premarin. The drug […] Read more