General

Alanna Koch, head of the Canadian Agri-Food Trade Alliance, is Saskatchewan’s new top agriculture bureaucrat. The province’s new Saskatchewan Party government, which ousted the New Democrats in the Nov. 7 election, announced Koch’s appointment as deputy minister of agriculture on Tuesday as part of a list of orders-in-council naming new deputies. New chiefs of staff […] Read more

Canadian farmers’ realized net farm income dropped again in 2006 to its lowest level since 2003, Statistics Canada reported Monday. The federal statistician cited rising interest, wage and fuel costs along with declines in hog prices and program payments, which more than offset revenues from crops and cattle. The agency painted the dismal net income […] Read more

Canadian beekeepers’ 2007 honey crop is over 40 per cent smaller than the record production in 2006 and about 27 per cent below the five-year average, according to preliminary counts from Statistics Canada. The federal statistician on Friday reported that the preliminary numbers put national honey production for 2007 at 61.4 million pounds, down from […] Read more

A country such as Canada that’s strategically positioned as a meat exporter should re-think its devotion to ethanol, the George Morris Centre warns in a new report. The Guelph-based agri-food industry think tank on Tuesday released a review of federal and provincial supports for grain-based ethanol, in the context of broader Canadian public policy. The […] Read more

Canada’s agriculture ministers will move to have their new suite of business risk management (BRM) programs running by the time their previous five-year Agricultural Policy Framework (APF) expires at the end of March. Coming out of their meeting in Toronto over the weekend, the federal, provincial and territorial ag ministers issued a joint statement Saturday […] Read more

The Canadian Federation of Agriculture (CFA) is proposing an addition to the proposed next-generation national agriculture framework to address regional issues that support the national goals. The proposed program, which the CFA has dubbed AgriFlex, would complement national programs such as AgriInvest and AgriStability and establish federal funding to support the cost-shared programs, said CFA […] Read more

Canadian agriculture ministers are gathering in Ottawa this weekend for a series of meetings that will examine current issues in agriculture and a proposed new national agriculture policy. The ministers say key issues for discussion at the November 16-17 meetings will be the impact of the high Canadian dollar and low livestock prices as well […] Read more

The death rate for Canadian children injured while working or playing on farms hasn’t risen over time but hasn’t dropped either, according to the latest data mined by the Canadian Agricultural Safety Association (CASA). Data collected by CASA for the latest Canadian agricultural injury surveillance program (CAISP) report shows 274 youths from ages one to […] Read more

The federal government will ask for a World Trade Organization dispute settlement panel on the issue of the United States’ domestic farm subsidies when the WTO’s dispute settlement body meets Nov. 19. Federal Trade Minister David Emerson said in a statement Thursday that Ottawa believes the U.S. “has breached its international obligations by providing agricultural […] Read more

Brad Wall’s Saskatchewan Party made long-sought gains outside the usual rural strongholds of its namesake province to win Wednesday’s provincial election, taking several key seats from Lorne Calvert’s New Democrats, including their agriculture minister’s. The NDP’s Mark Wartman, a United Church minister, MLA since 1999 and minister for agriculture and food since 2004, was declared […] Read more