GrainsWest quizzed Agriculture Minister Gerry Ritz, Liberal agriculture critic Mark Eyking and NDP agriculture critic Malcolm Allen about their positions on a variety of issues that are important to farmers. Here are their responses.

Canadians have an important decision to make in this upcoming election. GrainsWest is here to help.

Two different sides square-off on the OHS debate in Alberta.

Do you want to get into the business of agriculture? Or are you in it already but need to add a specific skill? Agriculture is a big business, involved in local, regional, provincial, national and international markets.

Frederick Sladen, born in England in 1876, was fascinated with bees as a child. At the age of 16, he wrote his first book, on bumblebees. He became an entomologist and moved with his family to Canada. In the early 1900s, Sladen was the lead apiarist with the Dominion Experimental Farms (now Agriculture and Agri-Food Canada). He was based at the Central Experimental Farm in Ottawa, working with what was in those early days known as the “bee division.”

Steve Larocque has a problem. “Our frustration at the moment is that we haven’t noted any telltale symptoms in our grain, but DNA tests sometimes come back positive for Fusarium,” he said.

Water—or, more accurately, the lack of it—has been on the minds of many producers in Western Canada this summer. Drought, and its devastating effects, have been with us since the beginning of agriculture.

It was the morning of April 18, 2012, when Davis Bryans, owner of Munro Honey, was told something was wrong with one of his bee yards in Sarnia, ON. A few hours earlier the bees had been busily foraging, but now there was a pile of them sprawled on the ground in front of the hives.

Occupational health and safety (OHS) is coming soon to an Alberta farm near you.