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
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Farmgate sales gain attention
Ethanol plant planned for Melville, Sask., area
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
It’s all in the family at northern port
CHURCHILL, Man. – Up here, being a Spence means never having to look far to find another. The extended family dominates the workforce at the Hudson Bay Port Company’s grain terminal, makes up about 30 percent of Churchill’s population and counts many leading citizens in its ranks. How is the port’s acting grain master, Ronald […] Read more
Liberal senators support wheat board provision
The Liberal Senate majority last week voted to remove restraints on the Canadian Wheat Board that the House of Commons had tried to impose through the Accountability Act. In one of many votes that stripped the Conservative centrepiece legislation of some of its power, a Senate committee removed a clause that would make the CWB […] Read more
Broe’s northern gamble pays off
CHURCHILL, Man. – Mike Ogborn didn’t get the friendliest reception the first time he was introduced to the union guys. His company, the Denver-based Broe Companies, had just taken over the rail line from The Pas to Churchill and the Churchill port facility from Canadian National Railway and the federal government. It set about the […] Read more
Alberta sugar plant in jeopardy
American trade action may close a sugar plant in Alberta, a company official warned last week. Daniel Lafrance, vice-president and chief financial officer of Rogers Sugar Canada, said his company would be forced to close one of its two western Canadian plants if the United States carried through on a threat to reduce access for […] Read more
Opposition defeats motion to alter CWB
In a clear signal to the Conservative government that it could not get legislation through this minority Parliament to weaken or end the Canadian Wheat Board monopoly, opposition MPs decisively defeated a private member’s proposal last week that would have marked a small step in that direction. On Oct. 25, MPs voted 149-111 to defeat […] Read more
Strahl promises vote on barley monopoly
Agriculture minister Chuck Strahl plans a vote among barley producers in January to determine if they would prefer life without the Canadian Wheat Board monopoly. During an interview the day before a scheduled House of Commons agriculture committee appearance on Oct. 31, he said the vote would be the first stage in what his task […] Read more
Pace gets hectic at northern port
CHURCHILL, Man. – Chief officer Gokhan Alicanoglu stood on the bridge of the Cenk Kaptanoglu and pointed out on a navigator’s map where he had seen icebergs floating near the entrance to Hudson Bay. “We saw four,” said Alicanoglu, clad in a toque and water repellent jacket as his crew and the port’s grain terminal […] Read more
Quebec warms to CWB
Bloc Québecois agriculture critic André Bellavance said he was playing “devil’s advocate,” but it was a question many westerners would appreciate. Why, he asked Oct. 24 at the first House of Commons agriculture committee hearing on the Canadian Wheat Board issue, should Quebec farmers care? The CWB does not affect Quebec products, as agriculture minister […] Read more
