Tag Archives: farmers

Manitoba farmers have had a rough couple of years, between environmental disasters and pandemic challenges, but there’s a lot more optimism for the 2023 season. “We had three years of drought, a worsening drought every year, and then the heavy, heavy snowfall of the previous winter,” said Trevor Sund, a …

As Terry Boehm sits on a tractor-powered snowblower on a cold winter day and clears a path to his shop, the grain and seed producer thinks about a more important path: the one his town and its young farmers will travel moving forward. Boehm comes from a long line of farmers near Colonsay, …

Forester Elbert Murray has seen lots of terrible storms in his 78 years, but nothing like post-tropical storm Fiona that’s left his woodlots in Pictou County, N.S., nothing but a massive, tangled mess.  “It’s gone and I’ve lost a hundred years,” said Murray, who predicts the forest will recover over the next century. “Eventually it …

In late April, when Nova Scotia is still sloughing off its winter chill, Ian Curry and Niki Clark can be found inside their greenhouse, using tweezers to seed one of the year’s crops. The small seeds are no bigger than a grain of rice — because they are grains of rice. …

Alberta farmers say the discussion and misinformation around federal targets to reduce fertilizer emissions are ignoring the voices of local producers and hurting the country’s agriculture industry.  The federal government has set a target of reducing emissions from the use of fertilizers by 30 per cent below 2020 levels by …

When Anastasia Fyk finished high school and left her family’s farm, she never imagined she’d live there again. But after eight years abroad, concerns about climate change drew her back to western Manitoba and her family’s land northwest of Dauphin, with the goal of finding a more sustainable way to …

Farmers are used to keeping an eye on the weather and their fields, but now they’re also watching the Bank of Canada after it raised its benchmark interest rate by a full percentage point in an attempt to fight runaway inflation. “It’s made for a challenging year, especially with paying off …

Usually, by mid-July, Ian Sparkes’ corn crops are fully grown and ready to be harvested and sold. But this year, the Chilliwack farmer says it will be at least another two to three weeks before they can be picked. Sparkes says the cold and wet weather B.C. faced this spring is causing …

Lenny Louis says when people visit his vertical farming facility in Welland, Ont., they’re often surprised by how much produce comes out of that one squat, two-storey building. But inside, things look very different. Stacked rows of lettuce, arugula and basil grow 365 days a year, and, Louis says, the produce travels less than …

In a nondescript building tucked away in northeast Red Deer, the phone is ringing off the hook.  At least that’s how Melissa Werkema, an upstart young scientist trained in Israel, describes how business has been since word spread about her new soil testing lab, which gives farmers from Alberta and …