By Alexis Stockford OrganicBiz staff Dan and Fran DeRuyck’s organic grain-cleaning plant is one of the first things a visitor sees when they arrive at Top of the Hill Farm, south of Treherne, Man. The large shed dominates the west side of the yard, bordered by bins which, on any given week, might be filled […]
University of Guelph – The next time you walk down the produce aisle of your grocery store, you may want to reach for red onions if you are looking to fight off cancer. In the first study to examine how effective Ontario-grown onions are at killing cancer cells, U of G researchers have found that […]
The Institute for Food and Development Policy, a nonprofit known as Food First, has released a new book entitled “Fertile Ground: Scaling Agroecology from the Ground Up”. Fertile Ground presents nine innovative case studies authored by agroecologists from Africa, Latin America, the Caribbean, North America, and Europe to make a case for promoting the use […]
It is possible to be idealistic and make a profit By John Greig OrganicBiz staff When Brent Preston and his wife Gillian Flies moved to a small farm near Creemore, Ontario, they were idealistic Torontonians moving to the country to grow small-scale organic food. And for the first few years they tried to fit the […]
By Greg Berg OrganicBiz staff Livestock producers are always working to avoid mortalities, but they do happen and are an unfortunate part of production. In addition, dealing with the carcass afterward can be time consuming. On display at Manitoba Ag Days this past January, BioMulcher is designed to handle these dead animals by mechanically breaking them […]
By Lorraine Stevenson OrganicBiz staff During the summer, Daniel Gosselin’s and Suzanne Dufresne’s cows graze on pastures seeded to more than a dozen carefully chosen flowering plants. In winter, they move back indoors to a warm, spacious barn and switch over to a diet of dried fodder. The cow’s seasonal diet is the secret ingredient […]
OrganicBiz staff During an organic field day at the Ian N. Morrison agricultural research station in Carman, Man. last July, OrganicBiz spoke with Katherine Stanley, a research associate at the University of Manitoba. Her work is centred on seed quality research and agronomic practices that can help improve the quality of organic crops. In this video, […]
Researchers at the long-term organic research trials at Glenlea will be getting some state-of-the art equipment By Laura Rance OrganicBiz staff The federal and provincial governments capped off National Organic Week by announcing a $366,000 investment in organic research at the University of Manitoba on Sept. 23. “This strategic investment in equipment and infrastructure will […]
By OrganicBiz staff Keith Bamford, an agricultural research associate with the University of Manitoba, takes some comfort in having the occasional ‘disaster’ on university research farms. Simply put, “It’s better that we have those disasters in a research setting than have farmers struggle with their livelihoods,” he says. In this video, Bamford talks about some […]
OrganicBiz staff “It’s the processes in the soil… in the farm ecosystem in the landscape and the watersheds, we need to understand those first and get those right first,” says Martin Entz, professor of agriculture at the University of Manitoba. Entz has been studying organic cropping systems at the Glenlea Research Station south of Winnipeg […]
