Better Farming - August 2016

8 / 88

8 Farm News First > Better Farming August 2016
SHORT TAKES
In May, a Google team proposed the
addition of a female farmer emoji to
our electronic communication
platforms. Women are certainly a
central part of the farm industry. The
Ontario-based Ag Women’s
Network , for example, has over
1,550 followers on Twitter. A popular
social media hashtag, #womeninag, is
used to celebrate women’s agricultur-
al achievements and to discuss events
like the Advancing Women
Conference .
The emoji has attracted discussion
in the ag community. Sarah
Jackson of Uplands Pheasantry near
Camlachie, for example, said she is
“happy that females in the agricultur-
al industry are getting recognition.
But, like all emojis, (the female
farmer emoji) doesn’t represent
everyone. There’s so much more that
we do – we’re extremely smart
business people; we’re really good
environmentalists. The straw hat,
overalls and pitchfork (image) doesn’t
show all the facets of what a farmer
can be.”
The female farmer is one of the
13 career-oriented, female emojis
presented to the Unicode Consor-
tium, which oversees the approval of
all emojis. Other proposals include
construction workers, doctors and
graduates. Reports suggest the new
emojis could be available later this
year. A growing range of voices have
contributed to the call for the repre-
sentation of professional women in
emojis. A March opinion article in
the New York Times, for example,
addressed the issue. BF
If you’re in Toronto and have an urge for fresh broccoli,
an initiative by the Toronto Food Policy Council will
soon help you find the nearest farmers market.
The council has been mapping the city’s food assets,
such as farmers markets, community gardens and
kitchens, urban agriculture and food banks.
Jessica Reeve, the council’s coordinator, says the
initiative grew out of the 2014 municipal election
when the council was looking for ways to engage
councillor-hopefuls in making food a part of their
election platforms. Then they realized that before
asking people to make goals, what was needed was to
first determine what food assets actually
existed within the wards.
“So that’s how we started with
the mapping approach,” she says.
Today, the map continues to
evolve with the goal to establish it
in an interactive form online. “We
haven’t done anything like this in
Toronto before,” Reeve says. BF
When it comes time for the pea
harvest Tom Bradish and his son,
John, climb into the specialized
harvesters they operate for
Bonduelle Canada Inc. and head
for Glanworth Drive. Their destina-
tion is thousands of acres on other
farms, sometimes more than 100 km
from the family’s processing vegetable
farm operation south of London.
“Glanworth Drive here is the
farmers’ 401,” explains Bradish
senior. They use the route to access
quiet country roads.
That’s why Bradish and many
other local farmers are so worried
about an Ontario Ministry of
Transportation proposal to
demolish a bridge that connects
Glanworth’s western end to Highway
4, Colonel Talbot Road. The bridge’s
closure will force farm equipment to
take busier roads such as Highway 4
and create safety hazards, they warn.
Emmilia Kuisma, a ministry
spokesperson, says in a July email the
change was proposed to facilitate
improvements to Highway 401 access
from Highway 4.
Right now, a ministry consultant is
Female farmer emoji: coming soon to a keyboard near you
Demolishing the farmers’ 401
Mapping a city’s worth of food
Normally in field crop production, trees remain at the
edge of a field. Not so in alley cropping. The technique,
which is gathering steam in some areas of the United
States, alternates rows of trees with rows of crops.
According to a 2012 information sheet published by
the U.S. Department of Agriculture National
Agroforestry Center and the U.S. Natural
Resources Conservation Service, the technique can
diversify sources of farm income, actually increase what is
being produced, and even provide conservation benefits.
Some farm operations in the U.S. Midwest have
planted black walnut and pecan trees between field
crops such as wheat, corn and soybeans.
Combining woody crops intended for biomass with
perennial forage crops is another potential option.
In an information sheet produced by the Universi-
ty of Missouri Centre for Agroforestry, Dan
Shepherd, a farmer from Clifton Hill, Montana,
notes that while the trees are being established, he can
still earn an annual income from the wheat he plants in
the alleyways. BF
Trees in the field?
modelling the new interchange design
to see how it will affect farm vehicle
activity, she says. The farm communi-
ty helped identify what equipment to
model, and analysis wraps up in late
fall. “At this point we’re still assessing
options regarding the bridge and there
is no scheduled construction date for
this project,” Kuisma writes. BF