Tornados on the increase

Canada was hit by more tornados than ever last year – 117 according to the Northern Tornadoes Project at Western University in London, Ont.

And that doesn’t count the devastating derocher that blasted through Ontario and Quebec on May 21, killing 12 people, injuring 12 and causing more than $1 billion in damages to buildings and thousands of trees.

Twenty nine tornadoes reached EF2 on the Enhanced Fujita Scale. An EF2 tornado is the third weakest on the scale, but can still be dangerous with wind gusts from 180-220 kilometres per hour.

In addition to the tornadoes, NTP reports a total of 94 downbursts in 2022, some of them packing EF2 intensity.

NTP’s executive director David Sills says his team continues to research the May 21 derocher.

It was “an extreme thunderstorm event that we will be studying for some time,” he said.

Founded in 2017, NTP’s goal is to better detect tornado occurrences across the country, improve weather prediction methods, investigate climate change, and reduce collateral damage from these natural disasters – whether it be property or people.

Saputo rationalizing U.S. cheese plants

 Saputo Inc., which has its head offices in Montreal, has announced major changes at five of its cheese-producing facilities in the United States.

It is building a $240-million cut-and-wrap cheese plant in the Milwaukee suburb of Franklin, Wisc., and when it’s finished in 2025, it will take over from its plant at Big Stone City, S.D.,  south of Fargo,  and one at Green Bay, Wisc.

Instead of pursuing plans to close a plant at Tulare, Calif., it will spend $75 on renovations and convert it to producing string cheese packaging.

And that means the string cheese plant it owns in the Los Angeles area will be closed.

In all, Saputo said, while the new Franklin plant alone is expected to take on about 600 people, about 720 positions will be affected in the pending plant closures. Affected workers will be offered opportunities to relocate to other Saputo plants and, if no spots are available, the workers will get “severance and outplacement support.”

The changes “aim to solidify our ability to meet current and future customer demand and further improve our cost structure,” said Saputo;s chief executive office,  Lino Saputo.

                                    

 

Marijuana collapsing

The boom in marijuana production is collapsing and with it hundreds of jobs in rural Ontario.

The latest closure is Canopy Growth’s operations in the huge former Hershey’s chocolate-producing plant in Smith Falls south of Ottawa.

About 800 people will lose their jobs.

Canopy Growth Corp. said the plant employs about 35 per cent of its workforce.

The move is meant to help the company reach profitability and enable sustainable and long-term growth, said David Klein, Canopy Growth's chief executive officer.

"Canopy must reach profitability to achieve our ambition of long-term North American cannabis market leadership," he said, in a statement to The Canadian Press.

"We are transforming our Canadian business to an asset-light model and significantly reducing the overall size of our organization. These changes are difficult but necessary to drive our business to profitability and growth."

Canopy will also cease to source flower from its Mirabel, Que. facility, which is owned and operated through Les Serres Vert Cannabis Inc., a joint venture partnership between the company and Les Serres Stephane Bertrand Inc., a tomato greenhouse operator.

The company will be consolidating production to its facilities near Kincardine and in Kelowna, B.C.

Lack of processing a dairy concern

 A lack of milk processing capacity is a major concern in Northern Ontario, according to Jean-Guy Seguin, Dairy Farmers of Ontario (DFO) field services officer for the districts of Algoma, Cochrane, East-Nipissing-Parry Sound, East Sudbury-West Nipissing, Manitoulin-West Sudbury, Rainy River, Temiskaming and Thunder Bay.

It remains at the forefront of concerns facing the industry, he told dairy farmers recently attending the district’s annual meeting.

”The industry has hit a wall as far as growth capacity because of lack of processing,” he said.

 Although the government has offered subsidies there hasn’t been an adequate industry response to build more capacity, he said.

While the rest of Ontario watches producer numbers dwindle, a migration to Mennonites to the north where land is less expensive has moderated the decline there, he said.

Chicken processing survey underway

The Chicken Farmers of Ontario marketing board has launched a consultation to gather opinions about encouraging more processors to set up business in the province.

It said the board of directors “endeavours to deliver a balanced portfolio of processing growth solutions, enabling the Ontario chicken industry to sustainably meet existing, new and emerging markets – while ensuring appropriate capacity for chicken sector growth.”

There has been such intense competition among processors for chicken supplies that the marketing board imposed rationing to end price wars.

And later it adopted policies to encourage production and processing to meet demand for specialty products that were of little or no interest ot the large-volume, high-speed processors.

The board said on its website that it is particularly interested in hearing from:

Association of Ontario Chicken Processors

All Individual Class A Chicken Processors

Individual Class B / Downstream Processors

Ontario Broiler Hatching Egg & Chick Commission

Individual Hatcheries

“All other Ontario chicken industry value chain stakeholders are welcome to participate. National participation is also welcomed.” the board said.

Through the recent CFO Strategic Planning process, the board of asked 1,300 family-run chicken farms for their views on relationships between farmers and processors and between farmers and hatcheries.

“Those expressed viewpoints will be included in this consultation process,” it said.

Cheese maker’s licence suspended

The Canadian Food inspection Agency has suspended the licence of Fromage au Village Inc., located in Lorrainville, Quebec, because it has not taken enough measures to prevent its cheeses from being contaminated with Listeria monocytogenes food-poisoning bacteria.

It is a family-run company making cheeses from milk produced on its farm and by neighbours in their area of Abitibi-Temiscamingue in Quebec.

A number of their cheeses have been on recall because of contamination with Listeria monocytogenes.

Sweda sues egg giants again

Sweda Farms Ltd. has filed another lawsuit against Burnbrae, Gray Ridge and the Egg Farmers of Ontario marketing board, seeking $7 million in damages.

It has another lawsuit still underway that it filed about six years ago against the three; a judge dismissed Burnbrae from that case after Sweda’s lawyer failed to demand documents from Burnbrae.

In that case, among many allegations it claimed e-mails indicate Burnbrae and L.H. Gray and Sons Ltd. made deals that reduced competition.

The new case says the three work together to keep Sweda out of the egg-grading business and that Burnbrae and L.H. Gray and Sons, which set up Gray Ridge Eggs Inc., hold great power over the Ontario egg industry.

“Because the Burnbrae Defendants and the Gray Defendants control the vast majority of egg grading stations in Ontario, they have significant influence over and can control the price at which eggs from egg grading stations are sold to wholesalers and retail customers in Ontario,” the lawsuit says.

They also influence marketing board policies and have inside information on what the Ontario marketing board and national agency are planning and doing.

“For example, Scott Brookshaw is the executive vice president of L.H. Gray, a director of the Egg Farmers of Canada and the zone 7 director of EFO. Ian McFall is the executive vice president of Burnbrae and the zone 9 director of EFO,” the lawsuit says.

Sweda says the Ontario egg board has the necessary power to direct where farmers market their eggs, but has refused its requests, first made in 2021, to direct egg production from 200,000 hens to its egg-grading business.

The lawsuit says “from April 2021 to the current date Sweda states the Gray defendants and the Burnbrae defendants, who were and are Ontario’s largest egg producers and graders, unlawfully conspired to raise, maintain, fix, and/or stabilize prices, and reduce rebates, at which eggs were sold in Ontario to wholesale customers, retail customers and breaking stations, by eliminating Sweda as a competitor from the egg grading market.”