Winnipeg Free Press > Opinion > Columnists

Laura Rance

  • Feds trim the beef from research

    Beef cattle and forages have been part of the research program at Brandon's Agriculture and Agri-Food Canada farm from its beginning 127 years ago. The research centre is among the five original research centres the federal government set up across the country back in 1886 when the connection between agricultural research and farm productivity was first acknowledged.

    View Full Column | 05/18/2013 1:00 AM | 0

  • Dishing dirt on Earth's soils

    It wasn't surprising to see a small crowd at a Winnipeg event talking about dirt. After waiting so long for spring to arrive, those interested in the topic are more likely to be getting their hands dirty than discussing it. The public screening of the British documentary Humus: the forgotten climate aid was taking place this week just as Manitoba farmers were literally starting to 'kick up the dust' and 'hit the dirt' putting this year's crop in the ground -- an eerie coincidence given the film's central theme.

    View Full Column | 05/11/2013 1:00 AM | 0

  • Lots of buzz about plight of disappearing honeybees

    The expression "canary in the coal mine" comes to mind when reading a newly released U.S. government report on the sorry plight of honeybees. Just as canaries once served as sentinels of a toxic situation for coal miners, the honeybee has been not-so-patiently trying to tell us something about the state of their environment -- and coincidentally ours --over the past 10 years or so.

    View Full Column | 05/4/2013 1:00 AM | 0

  • Farmers fretting over Manitoba's exceedingly late, cold spring

    Organizers of the annual Crocus Festival in Arden aren't the only ones fretting about Manitoba's exceedingly late, cold spring. The annual festival, which features a photography contest of the province's official flower and one of the first signs of spring, was forced to extend the deadline for entries from Friday to April 30 because the snow has been too deep for even for those perky little flowers to fight their way through. Spring thaw or not, the festival is going ahead as planned May 4.

    View Full Column | 04/27/2013 1:00 AM | 0

  • International aid that's building roots

    The word "farmer" conjures up different images for different people. The quaint, somewhat antiquated image of the dusty ol' farmer out working his field in Murray McLaughlin's ditty still resonates with many.

    View Full Column | 04/20/2013 1:00 AM | 0

  • Customer complaints about wheat a red flag

    On one hand, an international wire service story saying customers aren't happy with how Canadian wheat is baking up is bad news for this country's wheat-export industry. On the other, the industry can take comfort in the fact a customer complaint about Canadian wheat quality is rare enough that it becomes news in the same vein as a "man-bites-dog" scenario.

    View Full Column | 04/13/2013 1:00 AM | 0

  • Royalties are good; healthy food is better

    A few weeks ago, members of the Manitoba Buckwheat Association faced an unusual dilemma as they gathered for their annual meeting. What would they do with their first-ever royalty cheque? As co-owners of a buckwheat snack with the Manitoba Agri-Health Research Network (MAHRN), the association is entitled to half the royalties generated by the licensing agreement with the company now selling it.

    View Full Column | 04/6/2013 1:00 AM | 0

  • Turning down the flooding tap

    As sure as death and taxes, spring is coming to Manitoba. And so is another flood. We don't know when or how much, but it's now a certainty, given the sun's increasing warmth on the existing snowpack. Flood officials are optimistic it won't be as wild and costly as the billion-dollar flood of 2011, but they also admit Manitoba is at the mercy of the weather.

    View Full Column | 03/30/2013 1:00 AM | 0

  • Farmers' voice increasingly splintered

    Getting farmers to reach a consensus on anything has sometimes been likened to herding cats. You could even say there are four seasons in agriculture -- seeding, spraying, harvesting and debating -- as the farmers who stick around tend to fill their cold Prairie winters with heated discussions over the issues of the day.

    View Full Column | 03/23/2013 1:00 AM | 0

  • Maybe we should say 'thanks' to U.S.

    Recent developments in the ongoing meat-labelling dispute between Canada and the U.S. would suggest Canada's biggest trading partner has no intention of abiding by World Trade Organization rules. The mandatory country-of-origin labelling laws in the United States, known as mCOOL, have been ruled out of line by the international trade-dispute-settlement body, with the U.S. now required to make changes by May 23 or face the prospect of retaliatory measures from both Canada and Mexico.

    View Full Column | 03/16/2013 1:00 AM | 0

  • It's just horse, of course, but don't lie about it

    It doesn't matter how you dice it, the discovery of horsemeat in European meat products raises some awkward questions for the global meat industry. First of all, what's wrong with horsemeat? On the surface, nothing, except many of us would prefer not to eat it. The problem is, people weren't given the choice. In fact, they were lied to by food-industry labels that said one thing and delivered another. This issue is first and foremost about trust and truth in labelling, not food safety.

    View Full Column | 03/9/2013 1:00 AM | 0

  • Wheat getting star treatment these days

    After years of riding an exploding world demand for vegetable oil to become the star crop in Western Canada, there are signs canola is starting to lose ground -- literally. Higher wheat prices and newer crop options such as soybeans and pulses are prompting farmers to pull acres out of canola, which is good news agronomically. The crop is supposed to be grown only one year in four in the same field, but in recent years there have been jokes about the "canola-snow-canola" rotation.

    View Full Column | 03/2/2013 1:00 AM | 0

  • Proper nutrition a function of priorities: UN official

    A senior official with the UN's World Food Programme didn't mince words when asked recently about the status of the Millennium Goal commitment by world leaders to halve the number of malnourished people in the world by 2015. "We're not going to make it," Pedro Medrano Rojas, acting assistant executive director, partnership and governance services of the World Food Programme (WFP) said in an interview in Winnipeg.

    View Full Column | 02/23/2013 3:22 AM | 0

  • Stacked rotation an unpredictable, resilient system

    Ask a room full of agronomists what's significant about the year 1993, and the word "fusarium" ripples through the crowd. It was a memorable year. Much of the wheat in the Red River Valley was infected with the yield-robbing fusarium head blight disease, which can create toxins damaging to human and animal health. The disease is now endemic on the Prairies, and farmers routinely use fungicides to reduce its effects.

    View Full Column | 02/16/2013 1:00 AM | 0

  • Pull weed, you know it's dead

    Back in the days when a penny was still worth five Mojos at the local store, Grandpa paid us a cent a plant one hot July afternoon to hand-pull the non-conforming plants out of his seed oat crop. If some agronomists are correct, farm kids of the future might also benefit from a similar entrepreneurial experience.

    View Full Column | 02/9/2013 1:00 AM | 0

  • CWB harvests storm with cowgirl pin-up

    Maybe it was headline envy, a need to be back in the news after years of gut-wrenching, polarized debate over its future. Maybe it was a case of outsourcing gone awry. Some have even speculated the CWB's latest advertising campaign depicting a busty cowgirl in a short skirt and red boots stuck on a barn-board fence is a diversionary tactic -- designed to distract people from the fact that the former Canadian Wheat Board's downtown Winnipeg head office is now up for sale and it has hit the fast-forward mode on privatization.

    View Full Column | 02/2/2013 1:00 AM | 0

  • Councillors dumb clucks on backyard-hens issue

    Winnipeg city councillors who think the backyard-poultry issue will simply fade away after they vote to restrict chickens to areas zoned for agriculture might want to think again. Instead, the city will be earning its spot in SCREW, the acronym used by the growing Prairies-wide "right-to-grow-food" movement to describe the stance of Saskatoon, Calgary, Regina, Edmonton and Winnipeg on this issue.

    View Full Column | 01/26/2013 1:00 AM | 0

  • TB fight hard on Riding Mountain ranchers

    It has been 10 long years since cattle producers in the communities surrounding Riding Mountain National Park learned they were "special" in the eyes of tuberculosis-eradication experts. Manitoba's cattle herd has been considered free of bovine tuberculosis since 1985, but that designation came under scrutiny in the late 1990s after small pockets of TB were found in wildlife and the area's cattle herds.

    View Full Column | 01/19/2013 1:00 AM | 0

  • Why buy the food we only toss out?

    Cleaned out your fridge lately? If you are like most of us, it contained some unmentionables and a few outdated questionables, which in all likelihood wound up in the trash along with one or two items you're just plain tired of looking at.

    View Full Column | 01/12/2013 1:00 AM | 0

  • A year of many changes in agriculture sector

    Looking back, it's been an extraordinarily busy year on the farm and food file, with changes to the structure and substance of farm policy in Canada so dramatic, the effects may take years to sink in. The change that captured all the headlines -- the move to open marketing for wheat, barley and durum produced in Western Canada -- may or may not prove to be the most significant, given everything else that is taking place.

    View Full Column | 12/29/2012 1:00 AM | 0

  • Suzuki speech shows source of polarization

    What do you get when an environmental crusader such as David Suzuki crosses paths with a bunch of eco-rednecks such as the Manitoba Conservation Districts Association? Well, for starters, you get a good case study to illustrate new research into why environmental politics is so partisan and polarized.

    View Full Column | 12/22/2012 1:00 AM | 0

  • Crop rotation can keep pesticide costs down

    Move over canola. Manitoba has a new wonder crop. Some are even calling it the new Cinderella on the province's farmscape. Soybeans officially snuck into third place behind canola and wheat as the crop seeded to the most acres in the province last summer. While at 875,000 acres, it has a long way to go before it catches up to canola at 3.5 million acres or wheat at 2.9 million acres, it is really starting to turn some heads.

    View Full Column | 12/15/2012 1:00 AM | 0

  • Open-market supporters are gloating -- for now

    There were bound to be "I told you so's" flying around the Prairies no matter how things went this fall, as farmers started delivering wheat and barley into the open market for the first time in 69 years. As it is, the open-market supporters are free to gloat. The first three months of the crop year have seen a record 14 million tonnes delivered into the handling system at cash prices farmers could only dream about just a few short years ago.

    View Full Column | 12/8/2012 1:00 AM | 0

  • Economics overcomes inefficient tradition

    There is little doubt retired grassland researcher Duane McCartney is a deserving candidate for the award the forage industry is bestowing on him at the Canadian Forage and Grassland Association annual meeting in Toronto later this month. But the recipient of the association's first-ever leadership award is also the first to say his career-long pursuit of better grazing systems for the beef industry is part of a much bigger story -- how a sector caught in a catastrophe was able to transform itself and land on its feet.

    View Full Column | 12/1/2012 1:00 AM | 0

  • Livestock industry growing superbugs?

    If news is supposed to be new, it's surprising there was any coverage at all when the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention announced to reporters earlier this month that drug-resistant superbugs must be addressed through more prudent use of antibiotics. "How we use and protect these precious drugs must fundamentally change," Dr. Arjun Srinivasan, associate director for health-care-associated infection prevention programs at the CDC, says in a Reuters report. The CDC is linking up with 25 health-care organizations to raise awareness.

    View Full Column | 11/24/2012 1:00 AM | 0

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