If you’re happy and you know it, chances are you’re living in a rural community. That’s according to researchers at McGill University in Montreal and the Vancouver School of Economics, who e... Read more

My kids set up a Facebook account for me 10 years ago in one of their last attempts to get me to join the wired world. It was a flat failure. My Facebook page has a ghost town feel about it;... Read more

One of the most critical pieces of data which drives grain markets at this time of year is seeding intentions. Knowing how many acres of each crop are going to be planted in the spring is im... Read more

I’m okay with the new Canada Food Guide that was launched this past January. Anything to get Canadians to eat better is a must because Canadians have terrible eating habits. I’ve said it bef... Read more

One of the more frustrating things in trying to figure out how to deal with some common diseases is that the research and the advice that is given out is often conflicting. There are lots of... Read more

There’s a line I love from Paul St. Pierre’s Breaking Smith’s quarter horse when Smith’s wife suggests he do some reading to improve his farming skills and make the ranch run more profitably... Read more

There is growing recognition of what farmers, and their families, have known for decades: Farming is stressful! It is a profession where, at times, it seems everything and almost everyone is... Read more

An Ontario grain elevator operator was incensed when he complained about his electricity costs and an Ontario Hydro representative told him to use less electricity. Only a government-regulat... Read more

It’s certainly controversial to say that in a world where the biggest producer of soybeans is in a trade dispute with the world’s biggest consumer of soybeans, that prices are too high. But... Read more

A few years ago, I sat in on a dairy conference where farmers talked about their experiences after adopting new technologies. One farmer had fairly recently assumed responsibility for the fa... Read more

Canada’s new food guide was unveiled mid-January amid much criticism. Leaning heavily on fresh fruits and vegetables, whole grains, water and protein from non-animal sources, it has many exp... Read more

After 40 years on this little farm, I am still not sure where I live. I now have three addresses: one for Canada Post, one for the township and one for Google Maps. None of these organizatio... Read more

An arrest last October on a downtown Ottawa street drew very little media attention. I was fortunate enough to learn about it by reading Fr. Raymond DeSouza’s column in the National Post. As... Read more

Valentine’s Day is a very important day in February. Last February, I reviewed the classic British film Far From the Madding Crowd, about farming and romance in the mid-1850s. It brought ver... Read more

Silence in response to a question says more than 1,000 words. It indicates that the responder is unable to or doesn’t want to give the answer. This is what has happened with Coca-Cola’s fair... Read more

Using dry treatment on only some cows is called selective dry cow therapy (SDCT). The concept of SDCT is not new but has gained new significance, especially in countries where authorities wa... Read more

Have you ever wondered how some television preachers can deliver a lengthy sermon without ever looking at notes or at a teleprompter? You would think they are assisted by some heavenly or di... Read more

Another Christmas brought with it touching moments of friendship and reflection and much to be thankful for. But there was more. In our post-Christian culture, pleasures are exalted and mise... Read more

Every three or four years, the Globe and Mail writes a truly depressing piece on the death of the family farm. The latest one came out in December and it listed some alarming facts: While th... Read more

It has often been said that there’s really only one commodity that makes farmers happy as it drops and that is the Canadian dollar. Through the spring and summer of 2018, the loonie traded i... Read more

CTV News still covers the continued fake CRA (Canada Revenue Agency) telephone scam which so many Canadians have fallen for. A mechanical-sounding male voice advises that this is your final... Read more

In talking with dairy farmers, it is obvious that more and more farms are switching to group housing and group housing with automatic feeders for pre-weaning calf rearing. Aside from the lab... Read more

One of the most consistently reliable indicators of the direction of price movement in the futures market is the price spread in future’s contracts as you look forward in time. Basically, as... Read more

The day after last summer’s Ontario election, I was speaking with a man dressed in blue and he was not a cop. I asked whether his colours were in celebration of the blue wave, a Progressive... Read more

There’s no business that gives a person the opportunity to humiliate himself in public quite the way farming does. No other line of work offers the range of options for self-destruction whil... Read more

As I have written before, dairy cow production and health has improved to such an extent that major diseases that impact production are now as likely to be ‘subclinical’ as they are to be cl... Read more

I don’t listen to news talk radio and I seldom watch Question Period on television. When I do watch talk shows, I get turned off by the filler words that are used over and over. There are ce... Read more

It seems everyone I know in the country is struggling these days with his landline. My sister-in-law has had the same telephone line for 50 years and the roots of a maple tree have grown rig... Read more

I am still so angry that I could spit. On Oct. 17, a dairy producer meeting was hosted in St. Isidore by Dairy Farmers of Ontario’s Graham Lloyd, and local MP Francis Drouin. With no bucket... Read more

Although most Ontario corn producers go into the fall with at least a portion of their crop already forward sold, as harvest progresses and growers have a better sense of exactly how big the... Read more

Now that the U.S-Mexico-Canada trade deal has been signed, Canada is moving on to new trade with China. Federal Agriculture Minister Lawrence MacAulay was to go to China for eight days. It a... Read more

Moments after the wind ripped apart dozens of houses in the village of Dunrobin and several other locations across the Ottawa region last month, it also opened the doors of thousands of othe... Read more

Last month, I was lucky enough to attend an international veterinary conference. I don’t get to do that very often, although I do attend conferences in North America frequently. Internationa... Read more

There are too many Canadian farmers who think that if they patiently hold onto their crop until the Chinese tariffs are lifted, the soybean price will rally. Unfortunately, that’s only true... Read more

By Patrick Meagher What if I told you that I had a new product that I knew would make tons of money but there were just a few health risks? What would you say? If you cared about your fellow... Read more

By the time this is published, there will either be a new NAFTA (or USMC if U.S. President Donald Trump yet again gets his way) or trade ties with the USA and Mexico will be finished and our... Read more

I don’t own a television. One reason is that I often learn a lot more, a lot faster, by reading. Another reason is TV news is forever presenting a world in constant state of panic. Everythin... Read more

Grocery shopping can be an interesting experience. I actually enjoy shopping for food. The interesting thing is I spend the most time in the produce and fruit section of a grocery store, but... Read more

One of the core fundamentals of understanding the grain markets is that prices are always reacting to the crop ahead and not the inventory that’s already in storage. Over the next few weeks,... Read more

How to feed dairy calves tends to vary a lot from farm to farm, maybe even from person to person on the same farm. There have been quite a few changes in expert recommendations since Dr. Nei... Read more

I live in a very picturesque agricultural landscape with the nearby Bonnechere River flowing through productive fields of corn, wheat, soybeans, canola and sunflowers. There have been large... Read more

If you sifted through the noise on U.S.-Canada trade talks over the past year you would have seen signs that hinted to how it might all play out. Here are five. Firstly, take Canada’s offici... Read more

A lot of people in the modern world are locked into the way they live. They have a job, a boss, a mortgage and a lot of obligations. They live their way into a box and it becomes very diffic... Read more

My contention is that a population’s satisfaction level is indicated by the number of candidates running in an election. With Ontario municipal elections slated for Oct. 22, if my theory is... Read more

By Patrick Meagher The pundits are almost unanimous. Former Conservative Quebec MP Maxime Bernier had a tantrum. No, Bernier is not going to the Liberals. He called them, under Trudeau, a di... Read more

The summer drought was one topic of conversation during barbecued lunch in Cobden for farmers on the on the Ottawa Rideau Soil and Crop annual car tour on July 25. The car tour started at Va... Read more

On May 31, 1984 a tornado swept through the south end of the City of Barrie, and having lived my entire life in the area, one of the things that I’ve observed is that when conversations hit... Read more

When my wife and I go out to a dinner party, she often stops me on the doorstep and says, “Try not to talk about your chickens too much tonight, will you?” Compared to a lot of tricky subjec... Read more

As more and more farms install milking robots in Canada and the United States, research on those farms gives us more and more knowledge of what works and what might not in our production sys... Read more