Last fall, the city of Hamilton announced that its redeveloped farmers market was going “100 mile,” referring to a popular term describing the movement to source food from nearby farms. In January, Maclean’s magazine described what it called the “dark side” to the buy-local campaign. Maclean’s says it “underscores the cultural zenophobia and hostility towards diversity inherent in the locavore movement.”
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Single-desk selling of pigs died a controversial death by government decree in Ontario last year. But, on the Prairies, where the debate over grain marketing has been equally, if not more . . . . er . . . . vigorous, grain farmers voted last fall for directors known to support the status quo. Three directors were re-elected and two of three new faces support the board as it is. One of them is former National Farmers Union president Stewart Wells, conservatively described as “left leaning” by the Globe and Mail.
Producers elect 10 of the representatives on the 15-member board. The rest are government appointees. All elected terms are four years with elections alternating between odd and even numbered districts every two years. An accounting firm tallied the votes.
In a series of shows in early December, popular and influential NBC television talk show host Dr. Mehmet Oz focused on genetically modified foods and touted organic eating. In spite of that, Gord Surgeoner, Guelph-based president of Ontario Agri-Food Technologies, doesn’t see a consumer backlash on the horizon nor a significant change in perceptions about the safety of food. There isn’t close to the level of concern about genetically modified foods that there was a decade ago when Europe banned imports of genetically modified corn. “I didn’t see a lot of follow-up press and newspaper articles associated with it,” he says.
Egg farm JS West filed a lawsuit against the State of California in December over Proposition 2, which will outlaw battery cages by 2015. JS West isn’t challenging the legality of the law, which was passed after a referendum in November 2009. The owners just want the new regulations explained.
“Consumers are less interested in where a piece of meat was packed, but want to know where the animal lived,” said a dissatisfied Ilse Aigner, the German federal consumer protection minister, after the European Union initially passed a regulation that forms a new basis for new food labelling rules.
Aigner argued that the rules for meat, which covered a variety of criteria such as protein and carbohydrate content, fell “short of expectations.” Aigner hopes the measures will be strengthened when they are debated by the European Parliament, which has already spoken in favour of country-of-origin labels on meat.
The Humane Society of the United States (HSUS) is gunning for animal agriculture on both sides of the Canada-U.S. border, and won a vote to end battery egg cage production in California more than a year ago. Now the Center For Consumer Freedom, based in Washington, D.C., has its sights set directly on that organization. The Center cites a 2010 Watchdog Report from Animal People News, which it says determined that HSUS spends 50 cents of every donated dollar on continued fund raising and overhead costs. CCF has determined that the HSUS shares less than one per cent of its public contributions with pet shelters.
According to Reuters News Agency, the U.S. Department of Agriculture recently gave the town of Cody, Neb., two US$90,000 grants to buy land, set up and run a grocery store.
Cody is on the border with South Dakota. The old store closed 10 years ago. It’s a 40-mile drive to Valentine to buy groceries and 170 miles, north or south, to the nearest sizeable city.
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Farmland prices are exploding in Iowa and all because of corn and soybean prices, says DesMoinesRegister.com .
Corn is priced 50 per cent higher than in June. Bids of $8,000 (all figures in U.S. dollars) an acre are common. The average appreciation since end of summer is $1,000 an acre, according to the Iowa Realtors Land Institute, which reported an 8.5 per cent increase from a year before.
The Federal Reserve Bank of Chicago reported a 13 per cent rise in farmland values Oct. 1 for the previous 12 months.
Farmers expecting a 40 cent-a-bushel profit on their corn got $2.50. Bankers say loans are being taken out with 55-60 per cent equity, compared to 10-15 per cent in the 1970s and early ‘80s.