Ralph Waldo Emerson once said “the earth laughs in flowers” but that was before the cut flower business came into being. If you’re living in North America, chances are the cut flowers you are looking at come from Colombia, one of the major exporters. Three out of every four freshly cut flowers sold in the [...]
Roundup Ready (TM) resistant superweeds are now spreading across Ontario. Thanks to Monsanto’s special seeds that come with herbicides, weeds have become mixed up too and despite all the toxic sprays, these weeds are thriving. Cough cough. In the meantime, Monsanto is pushing for a Roundup Resistant wheat. Think about that next time you’re having [...]
The Premier of BC made an announcement this week, Earth Week, that the Site C hydro-electric dam will go ahead pending federal approval. BC Hydro has the following information on the Site C dam: Site C dam would be located about seven kilometres southwest of Fort St. John on the Peace River, downstream of where [...]
Canada’s entire flax industry – worth $320 million annually – could flub out. The European Union has put the brakes on flax exports from Canada because the exports were contaminated with the genetically modified version, Triffid. Triffid was a genetically modified (GM) flax seed developed at the University of Saskatchewan in the 1990s and de-registered [...]
The Canadian Wheat Board is slated for extinction. The federal government is agreeing with the WTO (World Trade Organization) that the CWB should be eliminated. The idea sounds simple enough – let the market decide how much the farmers should get. Sounds great right? Until you find out there are only a handful of corporations [...]
Picturesque scenes of apple tree blossoms against the backdrop of Okanagan Lake may no longer exist as fruit packing houses in British Columbia’s Okanagan Valley are packing up themselves. In June 2008, the operations of four grower-owned packinghouses: Okanagan North Growers Cooperative, BC Fruit Packers Cooperative, Sun Fresh Cooperative Growers, and Okanagan Similkameen Cooperative Growers [...]
Open cage fish farms are a common sight on the west coast of British Columbia, Canada. On Vancouver Island, 29 of them are owned by a single company from Norway, where fish farms were first invented. As I mentioned in my post last August, there are a couple of major concerns with open cage fish [...]
The University of Guelph has been working on a new type of pig that they have trademarked “Enviropig” but just how ‘enviro’ is this new pig? According to BetterFarming.com, “The Enviropig is a genetically enhanced pig with the capability of producing the enzyme phytase in the salivary glands. In the mouth, this enzyme mixes with [...]
Continue reading about Genetically modified pig waits for approval
A farmer from Dryden, Ontario was given a suspended sentence last week for attempting to transport 20 cattle for his neighbour to Winnipeg, a four hour drive away. It is illegal for farmers to haul their commodities using farm plated vehicles. “We have no way to get our crop to market. I’m not trying to [...]
Milk in Canada is getting more expensive to buy and more expensive for cheesemakers and others in the dairy industry. Why is this a concern? Food security is a green issue. Currently, Canada does not have a national framework to deal with the dairy industry. Unlike the U.S., Canada has a quota system which used [...]
