General

Supermarkets in Canada appear to have taken price hikes to “bold new levels” during the third quarter of 2008, but they shouldn’t expect wider margins to last, according to the George Morris Centre. A “think-piece” released Thursday by senior market analyst Kevin Grier points to a seven per cent increase in Statistics Canada’s consumer price […] Read more

Farmers’ Markets Canada, a national offshoot of Farmers’ Markets Ontario, plans a market study to create a profile of both the shoppers and sellers who use farmers’ markets across the country. Recommendations to be developed from the study will be shared with the national group’s provincial partners by February 2009, FMC said in a federal […] Read more

An outreach project to bring urban Canadians closer to farmers is among the winners of this year’s Agri-Food Awards of Excellence. The annual awards, sponsored by Agriculture and Agri-Food Canada and Toronto’s Royal Agricultural Winter Fait, were presented at the fair Monday by fair president Dr. Rob McLaughlin and Ontario MP and government caucus chairman […] Read more

Cooling energy, shipping and fertilizer costs, as well as a weaker loonie, are expected to support farm incomes in 2009, according to a new report on the Canadian ag industry’s prospects next year. A “special report” from TD Economics, released last Thursday by Derek Burleton, TD Bank Financial Group’s associate vice-president and director of economic […] Read more

Ontario MP Pierre Lemieux has been named Parliamentary secretary for agriculture in a shuffle of secretary files Friday by Prime Minister Stephen Harper. Lemieux, the MP for the eastern Ontario riding of Glengarry-Prescott-Russell since 2006, is an engineer and consultant by profession and previously spent 20 years in the Canadian Forces, reaching the rank of […] Read more

Canada’s rural population, namely people who live outside the commuting zone of larger urban centres, has remained fairly stable at about six million since 1981, according to Statistics Canada. However, stronger growth among the population of larger urban centres has meant that these six million people represent a smaller share of Canada’s total population, the […] Read more

(Resource News International) — Left for dead back in the summer, the World Trade Organization’s struggling Doha round is slowly being prodded back to life through a series of informal consultations in Geneva — and Canadian agriculture groups welcome the news. Since the beginning of October, Ambassador Crawford Falconer, chair of the WTO’s agricultural committee, […] Read more

Ontario MP Guy Lauzon, who up until last month’s federal election was a Parliamentary secretary to Agriculture Minister Gerry Ritz, has been named chair of the Conservative government caucus. Prime Minister Stephen Harper, in announcing the appointment Monday, called Lauzon, 64, a “well respected figure among his caucus colleagues and I look forward to working […] Read more

Funeral services were held Thursday in Medicine Hat, Alta. for Arnold Tremere, a retired executive director of the Canadian International Grains Institute, who died Sunday of cancer at age 67. Tremere was CIGI’s executive director in Winnipeg from 1989 to 2002, following a seven-year stint as the institute’s first director of feed and technology. The […] Read more

Gerry Ritz is among those in Prime Minister Stephen Harper’s cabinet who won’t need to call the movers. Ritz, a farming MP from western Saskatchewan, remained in the agriculture and agri-food portfolio and kept responsibility for the Canadian Wheat Board in Harper’s cabinet shuffle Thursday after the Oct. 14 federal election. Ritz will also sit […] Read more