Short Takes

The Agricultural Research Service, part of the United States Department of Agriculture (USDA), has developed a line of less aggressive hens that still produce a lot of eggs. The goal is to cut mortality in group-housed flocks without the usual, less than welfare-friendly beak trimming.

Housed together to an age of 54 weeks in communal cages rather than battery cages, commercial birds are merciless and suffer an 89 per cent mortality rate compared to 20 per cent for the less aggressive, newly developed line of birds. The gentler birds also produced more eggs.

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Anti-GMO politicians are piling up principles as a bulwark against the introduction of genetically modified foods in Europe. Scotland’s environment minister, Roseanna Cunningham, told a conference of GMO-free regions in late April that the “democratic principle” should be added to the precautionary and preventative principles to prevent GMO introductions. A press release from her office says surveys showed a majority of consumers on both sides of the Atlantic Ocean were either apprehensive or opposed to GMO products in their foods.

If you’re looking for money in agriculture’s public sector, check out education. University of Guelph educators are the top agricultural earners on the 2008 Ontario public sector salary disclosure list.

At a salary of $207,982, Elizabeth Stone, dean of the Ontario Veterinary College, is one of the university’s highest-paid employees, but she’s not at the top. That honour goes to its president and vice-chancellor, Alastair Summerlee, remunerated to the tune of $434,518 and another $29,495 in benefits. 

Fast food chains such as Kentucky Fried Chicken boast trans-fat-free menus. Plant breeders are striving to develop soybeans with healthier oils. Can we expect consumers to be informed and make healthier eating decisions? According to research conducted by the Robert Wood Johnson Foundation Health and Society Scholars Program, maybe not.

Don’t expect to see a reversal of a “Grapes of Wrath” movie scene, with destitute Californian farmers piling their belongings onto trucks and heading east to Oklahoma. Still, the spectre of a dustbowl in a state with a gross agricultural production normally higher than the whole of Canada is a possibility.

Large portions of California have been classified as experiencing severe or extreme drought according to the National Drought Mitigation Center at the University of Nebraska. Vast acreages may be laid bare without irrigation and as much as 250 tonnes of topsoil per acre may blow away, the Natural Resources Conservation Service warns.

Although they collectively lost $6.2 million when their beef-processing arm failed,  members of Gencor can take comfort in knowing they pumped $50 million into Ontario’s cattle sector during the BSE crisis. “But, that said, we never like to lose money,” says the co-operative’s general manager, Brian O’Connor.

Cattle producers who bought into the venture by leasing hooks annually for $15-$17 per hook won’t get their investment back, says O’Connor.

Money that can be recouped from the sale of the bankrupt subsidiary Gencor Foods Inc.’s Kitchener plant will likely go to major creditors, such as Farm Credit Canada. Selling could take some time, O’Connor says, because offers so far are too low to accept.

The increased use of ethanol accounts for only 10-15 per cent of the rise in food prices in the 12 months before April 2008, according to the U.S. Congressional Budget Office (CBO).

Much of the rest of the cost is due to higher transportation costs, the study says. Food prices rose by more than five per cent in 2008, four per cent in 2007 and 2.5 per cent in 2006.

The non-partisan Budget Office examined the relationship between increasing ethanol production and rising food prices. In particular, it analyzed how much the increase in prices might raise federal expenditures on food assistance programs.

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Danielle Ethier wants to know if a squat creature, the size of a raccoon, with a checkerboard-black-and-white face and (gulp!) two-inch-long front claws is in your neighbourhood. The question is whether you, as a farmer, are willing to tell her?

Ethier, a masters student at Trent University in Peterborough, says that as few as 200 American badgers remain in Ontario. Historical reports place them in Glencoe and even near Kincardine, but mostly their burrows are found in sandy soil areas of Norfolk, Brant and Haldimand.

Badgers are classified as an endangered species, and Ethier says landowners shouldn’t be concerned that they won’t be able to farm around the burrows if they are located.