Earlier this year, I wrote about the findings of a research report on Canadian dairy farmers who had switched to robot milkers. The research was published in the Journal of Dairy Science. Th... Read more

A few times a year, someone in the anti-tree cutting groups raises their voice and bombards papers with letters to the editor as bush land next to or near their property is cut down and the... Read more

Canada’s 2017 federal budget failed to offer any plans for deregulation. This is ironic because regulations are among the most important obstacles to innovation, the holy grail of the govern... Read more

You’d wonder, really, how it came to this. Dairy farmers sitting on county milk committees from across the province, congregated in March for three days in Alliston, being lectured on the pl... Read more

Another undercover anti-chicken farm video has been circulating, accusing Canadian chicken farmers of cruelty to animals. Problem is, this video does not depict a Canadian chicken farm. But... Read more

The start of the South American soybean harvest in early March seemed to directly coincide with a significant downward trajectory in North American soybean prices.  Yet throughout this whole... Read more

Just about every week I shake open the pages of the newspaper to find that some routine chore I have been performing since childhood has suddenly become illegal. Dragging trash to the road f... Read more

Should grain growers build on-farm storage bins to store grain crops so they’ll be able to sell when the price is better?  That used to be the case, but not anymore. In recent years, prices... Read more

Some days you can tell by the way Uncle John opens the door of the diner that he’s full of wisdom and can’t cork himself up. Even if a person is reaching for his coat after three cups of cof... Read more

The Beef Farmers of Ontario annual meeting in Toronto conjures up images of rough and tumble guys in jeans wearing cowboy hats and enjoying many drinks. That may have been the case years ago... Read more

The key variable in North American grain markets over the course of the month of March each year is in fine tuning the estimates of planting intentions for the coming crop year.  There are r... Read more

Last month, a reader asked why his cows might have shorter gestations than he expected. I am not sure that I can provide the exact reason for his cows, but it is a great opportunity to talk... Read more

I remember growing up in rural Eastern Ontario in the 1970s and hearing my father complain about caretaker politicians, so-called do-nothing ministers of large portfolios who didn’t do much... Read more

A winter job was to get rid of the old receipts dating back to 2000. Definitely too old, so I started opening binders and dumping the contents in a huge garbage bag to be burnt, stopping at... Read more

Just got back from yet another farm conference where the tech guru made the scary prediction that anybody who is not totally committed to digital technology today will not be farming in five... Read more

A century ago, over half of Canada’s population were farmers. Most folks understood farming as it was done then because it was fairly simple. Today people are so far removed from agriculture... Read more

In the past two years, my provincial and federal taxes have increased. I lost my federal tax credit for my children’s soccer and swimming lessons. Our family’s child care tax credit has decr... Read more

The total demand for Ontario grown wheat in this province’s flour mills is roughly 560,000 tonnes. Assuming that the North American Free Trade Agreement stays intact, we can traditionally mo... Read more

Canadian dairy product per capita consumption is publicly updated every quarter by the federal government. Canadian dairy imports and exports are tallied on a monthly basis by Statistics Can... Read more

In ancient Roman religion and myth, Janus is the god of beginnings, gates, transitions, time, doorways, passages, and endings. He is usually depicted as having two faces, since he looks to t... Read more

The announced closing of up to 29 rural schools by the Upper Canada District School Board has woken people up.  Apparently many were oblivious while the education system rotted in our rural... Read more

In the Christmas season when so much of society’s conversation is about the joy of giving, and the value of generosity, it would seem appropriate if the commodity markets would share a littl... Read more

In some countries, pigs are a lucky symbol and pork is eaten to ring in the New Year. It’s symbolic because pigs root forward while they forage for food (as opposed to cows, which stand stil... Read more

Some are interpreting Donald Trump’s U.S. presidential election win as a rural roar. Looking at an election result map, aside from the urban West Coast and North East in Democrat blue, a vas... Read more

In mid-October, I was involved in a series of seminars with dairy farmers about how farmers actually treat cows and calves on their farms. Each seminar started with a short introduction, fol... Read more

Read more

We, the people, are full of trouble and incongruities. Sometimes we’re only a little better than children. This is reinforced with observations from current events. Last month the U.S. Envir... Read more

It was only four years ago, but we are already getting nostalgic about the grain markets in 2012 and 2013 following a big drought which produced small grain crops in the United States, and p... Read more

Commentary by Angela Dorie Most likely the email inboxes at the Dairy Farmers of Ontario were filled with questions from farmers that seemed to all begin with: “What the hell…?” It was Frida... Read more