Patrick Meagher Editor There is a never-ending chorus of contradictions about the pandemic and the mess that we’ve been in for one year. Look at how people are living. Some are so terrified... Read more

  Selective dry cow treatment (SDCT) is very topical right now. SDCT has become the normal situation in some other countries. The alternative, blanket dry cow therapy – treating every q... Read more

Premier Doug Ford’s constant refrain, especially during the election campaign three years ago, was that after 15 years of dismal economic growth under his Liberal predecessors, he would make... Read more

This coming season, the Monarch Tractor company out of California will deliver a hundred new 40 hp electric tractors into the vineyards and orchards of that state. The batteries run for 10 h... Read more

Our knowledge base on how to implement selective treatment of cows at drying off (SDCT) and on what impact SDCT has on long-term udder health continues to grow. At the recent scientific conf... Read more

I am not a farmer – per se. Before I elaborate, I should point out that I do recognize “per se” is often a euphemism for: “What I just said isn’t reallllyyy all that true, but I’m hoping thi... Read more

When I was a boy of nine or 10 in the mid-1950s, my father bought a heavy wooden manure spreader from a farmer who had it for sale. My father never got to use it much as it broke down right... Read more

A neighbour drove in a couple of weeks ago to get eggs and was immediately greeted by our four-legged door-bell, Mike.  Mike is an over-large Australian Shepherd we took in a few years ago.... Read more

Although we’ve spent the past four months monitoring growing season weather in the corn and soybean producing regions of Argentina and Brazil, the yield potential for their 2021 crop is alre... Read more

A small Eastern Ontario community is going through what Western Ontario communities have already had to endure: the unpleasant fallout of a wind turbine project. In this case, they are being... Read more

It must seem as if every time veterinarians talk about the health of new-born calves, they end up talking about how important colostrum is. That is likely true because they do believe that g... Read more

As we persevere through yet another lockdown, the public health crisis of COVID-19 has turned into a marathon with an invisible finish line that continues to test our strength, patience and... Read more

My mother’s family were food faddists, a long line of Free Thinkers, nudists and spiritualists who changed diets like socks. They had already tired of vegetarianism in the 1920s and moved on... Read more

Since June, the value of the U.S. greenback has dropped 10 % relative to other major world currencies and nearly half of that decline has occurred over the past three months. Why that matter... Read more

When I started writing weekly newspaper columns, Ronald Reagan was the U.S. president, Mikhail Gorbachev was the Soviet Premier, Margaret Thatcher was the Iron Lady in the U.K and Brian Mulr... Read more

It is about 3 a.m., the time that the shadowy other residents come out if they are so inclined. I’m awake. Not just an ‘awake,’ that is easily solved by a sigh and a shuffle down the hall to... Read more

Lameness is a very common problem in dairy cows. There are numerous causes for the lameness but foot problems are most common. Sole ulcers, sole hemorrhages and white line disease (WLD) are... Read more

My neighbour, Willy Little, gave us a three-furrow Massey trip plow as a wedding gift in 1987. I remember the day he trailered the plow over to our place and dropped it off in the laneway. “... Read more

I’m not one for spending a winter vacation in a Caribbean resort, or sitting around in any of the popular southern sunny havens for snowbirds. I’d be bored. I have to be on the move and see... Read more

Back in April when the weather was lousy and the COVID-19 lockdown and news reports even worse, a routine online check of our bank resulted in a security question, “What was the name of your... Read more

Although the grain industry has spent a lot of time over the final months of 2020 discussing export demand for soybeans as a result of weather issues in South America and strong Asian demand... Read more

2020 ended with more than one elephant in the room. It was difficult to count the elephants, however, which seems odd since they’re elephants.   One gargantuan white heap became the dominant... Read more

We want cows to lie down as much as they want. We want housing that cows will like and we want housing that is easy for cows to use. This whole topic has been a subject of much research into... Read more

Thinking back to Christmas 2019, it is hard not to feel at least a little down at the drastic change in the 2020 Holiday. No parties of any kind, no traveling for any reason, no visiting fam... Read more

My lunch club has been operating for nearly 20 years now. My wife calls it the ‘Old Guys’ but its formal name is the Monday Lunch Club that Meets on Wednesdays. We like to talk politics beca... Read more

Business risk management programs have been news items again in the farm press, and with farm organizations and commodity groups. That’s no surprise in such an unpredictable year. Things nee... Read more

In the fall of 2019, Ontario farmers planted one of the biggest winter wheat crops in our history. With unseeded acres resulting from the wet spring, and new crop wheat bids more attractive... Read more

Clean is good. We all love clean. A clean shirt, a clean house, a clean and clear conscience. So, what’s not to love about a Clean Fuel Standard? A lot.The Clean Fuel Standard is not so much... Read more

Recently, I mentioned a public opinion survey where people were asked their opinion of individual, paired or group housing of pre-weaned dairy calves. In the survey, the majority of people w... Read more

I live in a haunted house. It’s been haunted for at least a century now by all accounts . . . I mean by all the neighbours’ accounts. As a writer I rely heavily on the neighbours for inspira... Read more

What does a Food Basics kind of guy do when standing in line at a grocery store checkout counter and the shopper in front has an unbelievable amount of packaged food to be scanned? Many peop... Read more

Like most rural families, we dislike mosquitoes and black flies. They make summer work miserable. Therefore, we have always appreciated having bats on the farm and try not to disturb them. T... Read more

In 2018, Brazil passed the United States and became the world’s largest producer of soybeans. That makes it extremely important for Ontario soybean growers to pay attention to crop progress... Read more

Note 1: This is not about the U.S. election. Note 2: For every 100 scary headlines about positive COVID tests there should be at least one appeal for calm. Recent computer models predicted t... Read more

So far, up to 25 % of restaurants in the country have now closed for the season and perhaps for good. The Canadian Chamber of Commerce expects 60 % of restaurants to close permanently by Nov... Read more

On March 11, when the WHO proclaimed that COVID-19 was a pandemic, I was working in Nova Scotia. We had planned to work with veterinary clinics to run seminars for dairy farmers all week. We... Read more

Since it’s more dangerous for a healthy child to ride a bicycle to school than it is to be in school in this pandemic, healthy children can go to school.But you might think the fires of hell... Read more

Many people tell me that we really shouldn’t be sending our kids back to school. I have a lot of educators and health care types in my family and they warn darkly that the virus is bound to... Read more

Vegetable gardens are now as richly productive as they are going to get and the urge to preserve the bounty is in full swing. We’ve had some let downs this year, largely, we believe to the s... Read more

I love my tractors and the front-end loaders. Like most farmers, I have a “few” tractors around. Five to be exact and one backhoe. They range from 40 hp up to 160 hp. The higher horsepower t... Read more

“Temporary foreign workers are entitled to the same benefits and protections as any other worker in Ontario.”  Those aren’t my words, although they are 100 per cent true. They were pulled fr... Read more

One of the core principles of a marketing plan is to put grain growers in a position where they can make a sale in order to take advantage of rallies as they occur and, even more importantly... Read more