Dyson’s pioneering new strawberry growing system

James Dyson, best known for inventing a new type of vacuum cleaner, is applying his inventive nature to growing strawberries. He wants to grow strawberries year-round and is conducting research at a greenhouse in Carrington where the plants are tended in a series of vertical wheels that resemble a carousel, each about 78 feet long and 16 feet tall populated with 1,225 plants.

Sensors measure photosynthetically active radiation, humidity, carbon dioxide, and temperature and determining when to supplement sunlight with LED lighting and when to adjust the growing environment.  Robots patrol the aisles emitting ultra-violet light to suppress mould so chemical pesticides are not needed.  Machine s detect ripe berries which are harvested by 16 robot arms. The farm harvests 200,000 strawberries a month.  The whole operation runs on a closed-loop energy system: crops from surrounding fields are fed into onsite anaerobic digesters that convert organic matter into biogas, which powers turbines generating enough renewable electricity to run the facility.  The excess heat from those turbines maintains the greenhouse temperature.  Rainwater captured from the roof irrigates the plants. The vertical growing system has increased yields to two and a half times conventional methods.

Almost half of the food consumed in Britain is imported, and the UK produces only 16 percent of the fruit it eats. The same instinct that led Dyson to spend years redesigning the vacuum cleaner because he thought the existing one was needlessly inefficient is now pointed at a food system that imports strawberries from Morocco in February when the engineering to grow them fifty miles from their point of sale already exists.  He owns 36,000 acres across Lincolnshire, the East Midlands of England, and Scotland and grows wheat, potatoes, and oilseed rape. Plus strawberries.

Screwworms might cost Texas $1.8 billion

The United States Department of Agriculture said the last time screwworms got into Texas, it cost Texas $283 to $375 million in the 1970s.

Adjusted for inflation, that would be $733 million lost by ranchers every year and a total of $1.8 billion by the time the pests could be wiped out.

The agency cautioned that direct comparisons are difficult because livestock inventories, veterinary practices and response capabilities have changed significantly over the last five decades. 

Texas’s cattle inventory now exceeds 12 million head, compared with about 7.2 million during the 1976 outbreak, while sheep and goat inventories have declined substantially.

Egg levies have changed

 

The National Farm Products Council has approved changes to egg levies in four provinces.

Ontario’s levy is now 44.45 cent a dozen, Quebec’s 48.05, New Brunswick’s 51.55 and Alberta 51.05.

The national agency increased its levy by six cents a dozen in mid-April and now the provincial levies have been amended

Canada bans cattle from Texas

Canada has banned cattle from Texas because two New World Screwworms have crossed the border from Mexico.

The worms lay eggs and when the larvae hatch, they burrow into flesh, including not only cattle, but also humans.

In response to last week’s discovery of New World screwworm in Texas, Canada has banned livestock imports from the state.

“Animals that originate from or were present in the State of Texas within 21 days prior to border crossing will not be accepted into Canada,” the Canadian Food Inspection Agency (CFIA) stated in a release. “

States including Florida, Georgia, Tennessee and Montana have issued emergency regulations tightening veterinary requirements for imports of livestock from Texas.

Derrell Peel, Oklahoma State University’s extension livestock marketing specialist, described Canada’s import ban as “a largely symbolic political move as it will affect a very small volume of trade.”

After originating in Panama in 2022 and spreading north through Mexico in the ensuing years, New World Screwworms were found on June 3 in Texas, then later one in New Mexico and another one in Texas.

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Chapman's Ice Cream just did something EVERY Canadian needs to hear about.

Canada's largest ice cream company used to source their fruits and nuts from US suppliers — some for over 30 YEARS. Then Trump slapped a 25% tariff on Canadian goods.

So what did Chapman's do?

➡️ They called Italy.

➡️ They called Spain.

➡️ They signed multi-year contracts with European suppliers.

And the VP said it perfectly:

"Even if Trump wakes up smarter than he did yesterday, we're about to sign lasting agreements with other countries — and the US companies that supply them are going to be out of luck."

Oh, and on top of ALL that? They're FREEZING their prices so average Canadians don't pay a single extra cent.

This is a family-run business. No shareholders. Just the Chapman family saying: "The least we can do is make sure Canadians can still afford ice cream."

This is what Canadian corporate pride looks like.

Next time you're at the grocery store — grab a Chapman's.
Every scoop is a vote for Canada.

TAG a Canadian who needs to see this!

SHARE if you're proud to be Canadian!

Another housing option for sows

Australians are using Maternity Ring technology for housing gestating sows as an alternative to gestation crates which have been attacked by animal welfare organizations and has resulted in some downstream industry bans.

Many North Americans have switched to loose housing, but Dr. George Charbonneau said typically the perception is that the increased behavioural freedom of sows results in an unacceptable level of piglet mortality. 

Many of the loose housing farrowing designs have a floor footprint (space) that is often 50 per cent greater than a standard farrowing crate per pen footprint., he wrote on the swineweb website.

This larger footprint continues to be one of the impediments to the adoption of confinement-free farrowing. 

The Maternity Ring (MR), is a farrowing system with a similar footprint to a conventional farrowing crate and pen. The Maternity Ring is in use in Australia but its performance, particularly with regard to piglet survival, has not yet been studied in a controlled experiment. 

A team of Australian researchers wanted to determine whether piglet mortality differed between farrowing crates and Maternity Rings. 

First-parity sows were recruited over 12 months and randomly allocated to one of the two treatments: farrowing crate (FC) and Maternity Ring.

The researchers found:

·       There was no difference in total pigs born, pigs born alive, or the number of pigs weaned between the two treatments.

·       There was a tendency for a 0.3-pig-per-litter increase in pre-foster mortality in MR sows, but pigs born dead, post-foster deaths, liveborn mortality, and total deaths were similar to FC sows.

·       Piglet removal for ill thrift was zero.

·       The incidence of medications in sows was six per cent in MR and 15 per cent in FC.

·       MR housing achieved comparable liveborn piglet mortality to FC first-parity sows. Future studies should test whether this performance is repeatable as sows are managed across multiple parities.

Charlebois said the reduced medication needs for MR housing offset a slightly higher mortality rate.

He noted that the MR was installed in the same amount of floor space as the conventional farrowing crate and should provide a commercially viable, close-confinement-free option to replace the traditional farrowing crate. 

This study examined only first parity sows and would need to be repeated in older parities, he said.

Chicken prices rising

Despite record-high production targets set by the national Chicken Farmers of Canada marketing agency, there is a shortage of chicken.

Since a year ago the wholesale price of some chicken products has increased by approximately 12 per cent. 

In April, the consumer price for fresh or frozen chicken rose 2.6 per cent, year-over-year. It was the first time since September, 2025, that annual price hikes dipped below 5 per cent.

Farmers get paid prices that reflect production costs, so they are not pocketing higher profits other than through increased volume.

And chicken farmers are unable to fully respond because there is a shortage of chicks, the result of avian influenza wiping out some hatching egg flocks and a lagging response to increased demand.

Higher prices for beef – up by 23 per cent from the five-year average – is driving demand for chicken.

“We’re just seeing more and more production, and higher and higher prices. It’s the exact opposite of what you learned in grade 11 economics,” said market analyst Kevin Grier.

“Nobody should expect lower chicken prices. Period.”