It’s the darkest and bleakest time of the year, and that can wear down the toughest people’s defences. It’s actually less dark right now than usual for this time of year, because there’s so much snow everywhere across the Prairies, but that snow also comes with much colder conditions than usual, so it doesn’t seem […] Read more
Tag Archives Blog — page 2
If it seems dark, farmers need help to see light
Repetition can often make it true — and forget about the science
Insight can arrive at the strangest times. I learned that in December of 2015 when I was working on a story about snow and the notion that Canada’s Inuit have dozens of words for snow. As part of the piece, I interviewed Graham Nesbitt, who worked at an Inuit cultural centre in Iqaluit. He said […] Read more
Our fragile free markets are snowflakes that need a safe space
Never has it been so obvious how terribly fragile and prone to melting our free and open markets are today. Winnipeg’s futures markets for barley, durum and spring wheat have been disbanded, after being abandoned by market players over the past few years. The remnants were swept out and mopped up last week, with the […] Read more
Why farmers are relieved as heck by what Morneau and Trudeau have done
Like taking a furiously boiling pot off a red hot burner, Finance Minister Bill Morneau and Prime Minister Justin Trudeau have rapidly cooled the outrage and upset created by the federal government’s rushed small business tax proposals. Farmers, we listened. We will not be moving forward with proposed measures to limit access to the Lifetime […] Read more
Post-truth world: Farmers continue to be some of the victims
The ugliness of the post-truth world was on display in front of the Manitoba legislature on October 11, as a protest against ending the province’s hog barn moratorium portrayed pig farmers as significant causes of Lake Winnipeg’s water quality woes. Protestors claimed that pollution from hog barns has hurt Lake Winnipeg and would do more […] Read more
Why farmers are mad as hell at Morneau and Trudeau
It’s safe to say lots of farmers are mad as hell at federal Finance Minister Bill Morneau and his boss, Prime Minister Justin Trudeau over the proposed small business tax overhaul. Why is this? Is it because they’re a bunch of fat-cat tax-cheats who have gotten their fingers caught in the cookie jar and are […] Read more
Why American dairy farmers might want to think twice about killing supply management in Canada (Part III of III)
If American farmers want to avoid future dairy trade tussles with Canada, they should probably support Canada’s supply management (SM) system. That might seem like a bizarre notion, considering that anger and upset with SM is high right now in dairy-exporting U.S. border states, and has drawn the endorsement of no less a champion than […] Read more
The Canadian farmer’s best friend (for now) will probably be the U.S. farmer (Part II of III)
Canadian farmers are very, very fortunate that U.S. farmers are exporting more than ever these days, because if anybody is going to be able to stave off U.S. President Donald Trump’s anti-trade moves it will be U.S. farmers. Trump is instinctively suspicious of trade deals and so far, in his first three months in power, […] Read more
Time for Canadian farmers to work with U.S. allies to fend off U.S. enemies
U.S. President Donald J Trump, the real one from Twitter, gave everybody in Canada a heart attack last week when he almost announced a USxit from NAFTA. According to a number of reports, it took new U.S. Agriculture Secretary Sonny Perdue running over to the White House with a map highlighting the regions of the […] Read more
Anxiety, uncertainty and perplexity: the mood in Washington this week
Is he actually going to do these things? Does he even understand them? Will we get anything done? Those questions seemed to be swirling around the Washington, D.C. agriculture and trade policy community this week as I and a group of agricultural journalists met with congressmen and farm policy experts in the U.S. capital. Anxiety, […] Read more
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