Food supply chain hangovers due the pandemic and the global impact of the invasion of Ukraine have enticed many to question the global nature of our food systems. Some are suggesting we need... Read more

Over the past decade, the global elite’s obsession with climate change has taken away from the many other major problems facing the planet — shown most dramatically by the invasion of Ukrain... Read more

Angela Dorie Backroads Dairy Trace (DT), operated by Lactanet Canada that is also doing the proAction and cattle inspections as well as herd management for the Canadian dairy industry, was d... Read more

Maynard van der Galien Renfrew County In the spring of 1981, when I was paying off an FCC farm mortgage for the on-going dairy operation we’d bought in 1970, I bought something extraordinary... Read more

I’m going to start off with a confession. While contemplating potential column topics for both the January and February issues of Farmers Forum, I wrestled with the idea of a “what if” essay... Read more

Nelson Zandbergen Assistant Editor It’s a top-down, command-economy, central planner’s fantasy come true. But Justin Trudeau’s recently released “Climate Action Plan” is truly disturbing for... Read more

Dr. Robert Tremblay Veterinarian In 2005, a researcher at Guelph investigated injuries to cows in over 300 tie-stall barns in Ontario. She looked at barn-related injuries that most people re... Read more

I have a bone to pick with dog owners. Why am I seeing drivers with a dog on their lap as they’re driving? Read more

This whole past year has given us a steady diet of bad news about supply chain issues, with hungry factories, tight inventories, shipping bottlenecks, resource shortages and thousands of peo... Read more

Patrick Meagher Farmers Forum analysis The Liberal government has set a new goal of reducing carbon dioxide emissions by 40 per cent below 2005 levels and wants to do that by 2030. That’s a... Read more

There was little to cheer about after the federal election. It was the lowest percentage voter turn out in the country’s history and all we did was return the Liberals to power with 860,000... Read more

I have a friend who moved out of the city with his wife 30 years ago to pursue a career as an editor and a shepherd on a small farm near Peterborough. Read more

Robert Murphy, Fraser Institute — During the election, Prime Minister Trudeau ran as a bold leader in the fight against climate change. Yet even if we agree that the voters have given Trudea... Read more

Despite the warnings about mental health in agricultural publications, I thought we were unaffected. Read more

Although my focus has been on the infectious diseases of cattle, it is difficult for me not to pay attention to what is happening with infectious diseases in other species, too ... Read more

Steve Kell’s Market Minute One of the most encouraging things to develop out of the summer of 2021 is our potentially record-breaking crop size. Ontario has already harvested its bigge... Read more

Angela Dorie Backroads For the past 21 months, since COVID-19 was first recognized, it seems the world has not only become more fearful, and more threatening but also far, far crazier. Proba... Read more

Just reading in this newspaper about teenage drivers heading out on the road without licenses because the province can’t deal with the enormous backlog in testing created by the pandemic. Read more

For many years I helped man our county federation of agriculture display booth at our county plowing match events. I always enjoyed meeting and chatting with people of all ages. It’s been tw... Read more

There are no arguments, scientific or otherwise, that will ever convince a raw milk enthusiast that the practice is dangerous. My own mother-in-law scoffed at the notion her milk cow posed a... Read more

One of the things that we can have great confidence in as we watch the grain markets unfold each year is that somebody is having a weather problem some place in North America, and the market... Read more

Imagine a quiet street lined with houses. Let’s call it Ontario Street. Now let’s imagine that one man decides that he is going to drive several hundred kilometres from his home to Ontario S... Read more

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