Farmers will be able to submit up to two applications to the program, depending on their needs, with successful recipients receiving up to $90,000 depending on the project category, they said.
The program will continue to be administered by the Ontario Soil and Crop Improvement Association.
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Costco is recalling its Kirkland brand Greek yogourt packaged in 24 servings because of mould.
The Canadian Food Inspection Agency said the microbial contamination is not harmful, though stores and consumers are told not to use, sell, serve or distribute the affected product.
Additional protections have been applied in the townships of Melancthon, Amaranth and East Garafraxa in Wellington County.
The GRCA source water protection plan came into effect July 1, 2016.
Ontario’s conservation authorities were mandated to develop source water protection plans following a disastrous poisoning of Walkerton’s water supply with E. coli bacteria. Seven people died and more than 2,000 were sickened.
The Canadian Food Inspection Agency reports that there was only one case of rabies in Ontario in August.
Unfortunately a rabid bat bit a Brandford woman while she was in Temiskaming the first week of September.
General Mills has sold its yogourt business which features Yoplait and Liberté brands for $2.1 billion.
Sodiaal is buying the Canadian operations and Lactalis the business in the United States.
The U.S. plant has its head offices at Golden Valley, Minnesota.
The Canadian operations are centred at Ste. Hyacinthe, Que.
General Mills bought the company in 2011, paying $1.2 billion for 51 per cent of thee shares. The business was a co-operative started by dairy farmers in France.
Sodiall made another deal with General Mills in 2021 when it bought the Yoplait business in Europe.
Sodiaal has been in Canada since 1971, but this deal is a return to Canada.
Sodiaal is the leading French dairy cooperative, with 15,300 farmers spread across 72 departments and franchises in 40 countries.
This week it’s beef farmers. Recently it was pork producers.
Nearly three dozen groups associated with beef production, ranching and the environment signed on to a letter sent to United States Trade Representative Katherine Tai, asking for her support to restore mandatory country of origin labeling (MCOOL) for beef.
Producer organizations, including Ranchers-Cattlemen Action Legal Fund United Stockgrowers of America (R-CALF USA) have persistently lobbied to keep MCOOL issues part of the national legislative conversation.
The World Trade Organization ruled in 2014 that such meat labeling law violates U.S. international trade obligations by discriminating against Canadian cattle and pigs and Mexican cattle.
But before that decision came down, Canadians lost hundreds of millions of dollars to depressed prices for cattle and hogs and had to pay lawyers and consultants millions of dollars to achieve justice.
Grupo Bimbo, now the owner of Canada Bread Co., is suing Maple Leaf Foods over price-fixing bread.
Canada Bread paid a $50-million fine to Revenue Canada when it admitted that the company was involved in price-fixing.
But now Canada Bread is accusing senior executives of Maple Leaf Foods for the price-fixing scam.
That would presumably include then-president and chief executive officer Michael McCain.
Remember him, the guy who said when his father bought control of Maple Leaf Foods, that he would bury the Ontario pork marketing board which existed to protect farmers from corporate buyers?
Canada Bread’s parent company, Mexico-based Grupo Bimbo, has previously said that it was unaware of the company’s role in fixing bread prices before its $1.83-billion acquisition in 2014, and was unaware of the details of the price-fixing arrangements until the Bureau’s investigation became public in 2017.
In June of 2023, the company pleaded guilty to the criminal scheme, acknowledging that Canada Bread made “arrangements” with one or more senior executives at competitor Weston Foods leading to two wholesale price increases in 2007 and 2011.
In a court filing on Thursday, Canada Bread argued that it is entitled to damages from Maple Leaf related to that investigation, including the fine; further damages for “breach of contract,” “fraudulent misrepresentation” and “unjust enrichment”; as well as any damages that may arise from an ongoing class-action lawsuit related to the alleged scheme.
But Canada Bread is arguing that it is not liable to the plaintiffs in that lawsuit because, “until May of 2014, Maple Leaf – then the company’s controlling shareholder – exercised control over the affairs and activities” of Canada Bread.
In its amended statement of defence and crossclaim related to the class action, which was filed with the Ontario Superior Court of Justice on Thursday, Canada Bread alleged that it was “a victim of a scheme conceived by Maple Leaf” to use it as a “shield” for unlawful conduct.
“Maple Leaf, through its personnel acting as senior officers or members of the Board of Directors controlling and directing Canada Bread, knew or ought to have known of any anticompetitive conduct by Canada Bread,” the company stated in the court document.
Peter Townsley, a microbiologist from British Columbia, hood-winked organic growers into believing his fertilizer featuring fish guts and chicken feathers was organic.
In fact he was spiking it with nitrogen derived from a byproduct of lysine production from soybeans at an ADM plant at Decatur, Ill. It was a substance banned for organic production.
Kenneth Nelson, an American, was doing the same thing.
Together they are believed to have marketed more than $50 million worth of their fertilizers, mainly in California, in the 1980s and 1990s.
The Farm Journal has produced a feature article about the scammers and how it took years for an organic regulator to track down enough proof to charge the two crooks.
He eventually got enough evidence through the help of a whistleblower.
Townsley hid his cheap nitrogen in a tank below floorboards in his production facility.
Nelson was more brazen and hooked hoses to railway cars to siphon his nitrogen into his production tanks.
Nelson was sentenced to six and a half years in prison and ordered to pay $9 million in restitution. His son murdered him in 2018.
Townsley was sentenced to one year in prison and fined $125,000 in 2012.
Pig Improvement Company (PIC) said it believes it will be ready and cleared to sell PRRS-resistant pigs to farmers in the United States by 2026.
But sales to Canadians remain in question because these pigs have been genetically altered by gene editing.
The gene that has been eliminated is responsible for production of a protein which PRRS virus attaches to and begins to multiply. With nothing to attach to, pigs are not infected.
Currently in Canada, gene-edited plants don’t require additional safety checks if the final plant product doesn’t contain foreign DNA. Similarly, gene editing can’t introduce or increase a known allergen or toxin of key nutritional composition, and it can’t change the food use of the plant.
Stuart Smyth of the University of Saskatchewan said the science that led regulators to that decision could also be applied to animals. Smyth is a specialist in biotechnology regulation.
“As long as what’s being put forward doesn’t have any difference in risk profile, it would be difficult to imagine why you would need to have a different regulatory system,” Smyth said.
Sobeys, Canada’s second-largest supermarket chain, reports first-quarter sales increased by eight-tenths of one per cent which is less than the rate of food-prices inflation.
Profit slipped from $261 million to $207.8 million.
The company sold its Western Canada gas stations to Shell Canada and slimmed its executive ranks by offering buyouts.
It took a financial hit to end a partnership with Ocado Group PLC which provided electronic services for Sobeys’ Viola home-delivery service.
When those one-time deals are excluded, profits from ongoing operations amounted to $218.7 million, the company said.
Sales in Sobeys stores increased by one per cent, but Viola on-line shopping and home delivery sales increased by 26.2 per cent.
It said shoppers are shifting to its Freshco stores which feature less selection at lower prices.
The American Meat Institute, which includes Canada’s biggest meat packers, is protesting over government rule changes making it more difficult to defend against market monopoly charges.
“This position was wrong before and is wrong now,” said Mark Dopp, chief pperating Officer and lawyer for the Meat Institute.
The institute said the proposed rules violate the Constitution and the Administrative Procedure Act because of its breadth and vagueness.
“Changing the harm to competition standard requires Congressional action and that fact is highlighted by the Supreme Court’s decision in West Virginia vs the Environmental Protection Agency,” said Dopp.
“In addition, the proposal includes standards so vague that, if adopted, it would be impossible for a regulated entity to know how to comply.”
Dopp raised the spectre of higher meat and poultry prices and harm to farmers, and meat packers.
Meat packers and poultry processors in the United States have paid hundreds of millions of dollars to head off class-action court cases and the government Is offering subsidies to encourage the establishment of new meat-packing and poultry processing plants and competitors.
The national supply management agency for chicken has set a production target for early winter at a cautious one per cent above base quota.
For Ontario the increase is 1.4 per cent.
The main reason for the increase is continued high prices for competing meats, especially beef, Chicken Farmers of Ontario said in its report on the production-setting meeting.
The production period is Dec. 15 to Feb. 8.
Veterinarian Behnam Abbasian made a capsule containing liquid propylene glycol at his London lab, BioFerScience, so all that’s needed is the capsule instead of holding up the cow’s head to force her to swallow a liquid treatment.
BioFerScience specializes in encapsulation, or the protection, of microbes that promote health.
Porcine Epidemic Diarrhea virus has broken out at a hog-finishing operation in Middlesex County.
Statistics Canada reports that Canadian wheat stocks were down by 18.5 per cent by the end of July compared with a year earlier.
Canola stocks were up by 67 per cent.
It said one of the reasons wheat stocks were down was a one per cent decline in total supply.
Commercial stocks rose 39.7 per cent to 3.8 million tonnes while on-farm stocks fell 72.7 per cent to 796 000 million tonnes.
Canadian canola stocks increased to 3.1 million tonnes; commercial stocks rose 129 per cent to 2.3 million tonnes while on-farm stocks fell 7.7 per cent to 775,000 tonnes.
Canadian processors increased canola crushing by 9.1 per cent to a record 11.5 million tonnes. Much of that increase was for biofuel.
Higher domestic disappearance was more than offset by lower Canola exports were down by 15.9 per cent to 6.7 million tonnes.
The National Farmers Union issued a news release announcing its opposition to the World Trade Organization and trade deals that hurt low-income farmers.
It said “the National Farmers Union joins our allies in the global peasant movement, La Via Campesina, to commemorate the sacrifice of Korean peasant leader, Lee Kyung Hae who 21 years ago on this day at the World Trade Organization ministerial meeting in Cancun, Mexico, took his life in protest against the WTO wearing a sign that read “WTO Kills Farmers.”
“Today, farmers, farm workers, peasants and Indigenous peoples organized in La Via Campesina honour Mr. Lee and continue to fight in the Global Day of Action Against the WTO and Free Trade Agreements,” the NFU said.
“We see this power grab most evidently today in the acceleration of attacks on farmer’s seed rights, farmland grabs, rural depopulation, farm income crisis, worker exploitation, forced migration, environmental degradation, climate crisis and on-going patriarchy, colonization, war and imperialism that fundamentally violate human rights and the rights of nature,” the NFU said.
“We especially denounce the inhumane free market logic that is enabling the on-going genocide in Gaza, as arms continue to be supplied and food continues to be used as a weapon of war.
“We also see how this unjust trade regime is being used by the United States government, under the Canada-US-Mexico trade agreement (CUSMA), with support from Canada, to challenge Mexico’s restrictions on the use of genetically modified (GM) corn (maize)— a staple of the Mexican diet that is central to Mexican culture, history and identity, and integral to Indigenous food sovereignty and spirituality.”
DLG (German Agricultural Society) has bought Underhill Enterprises Inc. which runs the Canadian Dairy XPO at Stratford every spring.
DLG said the Stratford show is the leading exhibition for the Canadian dairy industry, although the Royal Agricultural Winter Fair might contest that claim.
The German company is forming a new subsidiary, DLG North America, that will be based in Toronto.
The management team of Underhill Enterprises Inc. will
now work for DLG North America, including its founder, Jordon Underhill.
The company said “a key aim . . . is to further knowledge among farmers primarily through international networking platforms like
Canadian Dairy XPO, an essential part of the acquisition.
It said it wants to “bridge the gap between North America and Europe and “will be adding not only its agricultural know-how and international networks but also its exhibition expertise, drawing on its 30 agricultural trade fairs worldwide, including EuroTier, the world’s leading trade fair for livestock technologies held in Germany.”
It has already funded more than 100 projects, 67 of them for applied research and pilot and demonstration projects and 10 for commercialization projects.
More than 30 of them are receiving mentoring through the Ontario Accelerator Hub.
The money is in the Ontario Agri-Food Research Initiative.
The initial applications opened in October last year with $16.5 million and among projects funded is one for biosecurity for hog and poultry farms, another to detect contamination at food processing plants and large farms and one to improve data management on dairy farms.
The United Nations’ food price index, calculated by the Food and Agriculture Organization, stood at 120.7 points in August, marginally down from its revised figure for July, as decreases in the price indices for sugar, meat and cereals outweighed increases in those for vegetable oils and dairy products.
Compared to historical levels, the index in August averaged 1.1 percent lower than its corresponding value one year ago and 24.7 percent below its peak of 160.3 points reached in March 2022.
But not if you buy your groceries at Loblaws, Sobey's or Metro.
A Brantford man has been infected with rabies, likely from a bat while he was in Temiskaming.
It is the first case in Ontario since 1967 and the first ever in Brant County.
A sow and her piglets were a big attraction at the Canadian National Exhibition in Toronto.
Ontario Pork lined up 36 volunteers to be “Hambassadors” who filled over 80 shifts across 18 days of the CNE.
The Hambassador program connects pork producers and other industry members with a largely urban audience to provide information on how pigs are raised, and why the pork industry is important.
The Pig Mobile and its viewable sow housing brings an important part of a pig farm to consumers, allows those attendees who may have never seen a farm animal before the opportunity to ask questions and learn more where their food comes from, the pork board said.
The live viewing window, that includes two sightlines of a sow, and her piglets remains a fantastic tool to educate and engage consumers while also telling the important story of the pork supply chain and the people who work in our industry, the board said.
The Ontario government will open applications Sept. 15 for a new fund that will offer up to $50,000 to associations upgrading their cybersecurity.
Ontario’s Cybersecurity Preparedness Initiative will cover half of the costs, up to $50,000 per organization.
Those eligible are all marketing boards and Beef Farmers of Ontario.
Applications can be filed up to Jan. 20.
The website is https://www.ontario.ca/page/cybersecurity-preparedness-initiative.
It's hard to believe that supply-management marketing boards need a taxpayer-funded subsidy for cybersecurity.
The Ontario government is giving up to $1 million a year for six years to the Ontario Craft Cider Marketing Fund.
Ontario Agriculture Minister Rob Flack said the money is to help Ontario cideries reach more local customers.
“We recognize the industry’s great potential for growth, and this investment is just one way we are ensuring its success, now and in the future,” Flack said.
There are more than 60 craft cideries in the province.
The government also has a Small Cidery Program that offers grants of up to $220,000 to add workers and equipment.
I guess the Amish and Old Order Mennonites don’t qualify.
Fire destroyed a barn near Mount Forest housing 1,600 pigs.
Firefighters from Wellington North, Minto and Dundalk were at the site on Sideroad 5E near Derrynane.
Governor Jim Pillen has signed an executive order prohibiting state agencies and contractors from buying cultivated meat products starting next year.
Pillen is using the Nebraska Department of Agriculture to develop new guidelines to “protect the state’s agriculture industry as well as consumers, from lab-grown meat,” he said.
Pillen also wants his agriculture department to begin developing a rulemaking process to ensure that any cultivated meat products sold in stores in Nebraska are “properly labeled and are not marketed next to natural meat on the same shelves.”
There are also plans In the works to pass legislation banning lab-grown meats from Nebraska.
Florida was the first state to enact a cultivated meat ban criminalizing the manufacture and sale of cell-cultured meat.
It went into effect July 1 and prompted an outcry from investors in biotech and food companies, in addition to sparking a lawsuit by alternative protein company Upside Foods.
Similar legislation was introduced In Alabama and Ohio soon after the initial move on cultivated meat by Florida Governor Ron DeSantis in May.
I think courts will throw out all these laws. The best answer to this new competition is for farmers and meat packers to offer consumers products they prefer.
The deal would make Bunge the world’s largest grain trader and it would use its clout to the detriment of farmers, the NFU warned.
The deal is awaiting a Canadian government decision on whether to allow it.
The NFU said farmers formed co-operatives to market their grain, evolving into the Alberta, Saskatchewan and Manitoba wheat pools which Viterra bought a merged.
Even that was not enough, so farmers persuaded the federal government to form the Canadian Wheat Board and grant it monopoly power over grain exports, including a monopoly on inter-provincial grain trading.
In the 1960s and 1970s, that proved to be unpopular and federal grains ministers, beginning with Otto Lang, removed some grains from the inter-provincial monopoly, starting with barley.
Then the Conservative government of former Prime Minister Stephen Harper cancelled the Wheat Board’s monopoly, setting the stage for foreign grain-trading companies to buy export infrastructure, such as the provincial wheat pools.
Canada’s new tariff follows a move by the U.S. to heavily tax Chinese-made electric vehicles.
China also targeted Canadian canola two years ago in response to the arrest of Meng Wangzhou, an executive of Huawei sought by U.S. law officials in connection with exports to Iran.
China banned canola imports from Richardson and Viterra and cost them an estimated $2.35 billion in lost sales.
Last year Canada sold about $5 billion worth of canola to China.
The Canola Council of Canada told federal officials that it would likely be a target of Chinese retaliation if it went ahead with tartiffs on China’s electric vehicles.
Ontario Premier Doug Ford has invested heavily in the electric vehicle industry and therefore urged the federal government to keep low-cost electric vehicles out of the Canadian market.