Canadian agriculture has faced COVID-19 issues within every industry subset. Challenges in southern Alberta’s Feedlot Alley, the province’s central hub for feeder cattle, have piled up since early 2019 and the global pandemic was just the latest hit in a whirlwind stretch.
A born communicator, Lesley Kelly put her conversational skills to work as an advocate for agriculture. Kelly maintains the High Heels and Canola Fields blog, which she supports with Instagram, Facebook and Twitter feeds. She also co-hosts the What the Farm Podcast with influential American farmer Rob Sharkey.
As a farmer, #AgTwitter might well be a part of your time spent online each day. Across Canada and around the world, the ongoing Twitter conversations flagged by this hashtag influence farmers and ag industry professionals as well as consumers.
The ability of legumes to self-fertilize by fixing nitrogen from the air is well-known. Developing this ability in grains, however, could radically change Canadian cereal crop production. Such an innovation has the potential to diminish input costs and decrease environmental impact, but making it happen is a complex and challenging task. Alicja Ziemienowicz, a research scientist with Agriculture and Agri-Food Canada’s Lethbridge Research and Development Centre, is working to solve this tricky biological puzzle. While her research began in 2014, and has yielded impressive results, it could be more than a decade from now until we see nitrogen-fixing grains blowing in the wind.
Over seven-plus decades, Alberta farmer Charles Sherwood Noble developed and promoted new farming practices and technical innovations. Of these, the Noble blade cultivator was used around the world as a low soil disturbance weed control tool. For his work, he was named a Member of the Order of the British Empire in 1943.
The digital realm is rich with information resources of practical interest to agriculture professionals. We have collected a variety of such interesting and informative apps, websites and newsletters. The area of ag research is particularly well served in this selection. Of course, information can flow both directions, as it does in the case of the citizen science app and insect-themed social media account we’ve included here.
A zombie walks into a bar and the bartender says, “We have a drink named after you. Want one?” The zombie nods and says, “Sure. Give me a Lindsey.” Now, a Zombie is a cocktail and not a beer, but I still stand by my joke.
While statistics are limited, some industry insiders estimate about 50 per cent of farmers haul their own grain, while the other 50 per cent rely fully or partly on commercial trucking services, popularly referred to as custom grain haulers.
Today, only two per cent of Canadians farm. The other 98 per cent may be curious but have little knowledge of it. Some don’t care or have developed a fear of agriculture. Numerous consumers read farming myths circulated on social media platforms rather than getting information from the hard-working and forward-thinking agriculture community.
Like most farmers, Jody Wacowich’s parents made efforts to be safe at their Redwater cow-calf operation. But when she was growing up on the family farm in the ’80s and ’90s, the safety culture of the day didn’t go above and beyond. She saw her share of preventable accidents and understood the difficulty in convincing those set in their ways that there was room for improvement.
