
Comment

Comment: Continuous improvement?
Canadian producers as a whole have become more efficient over the decades in almost any way you can think to measure. One example of those gains is a study conducted by researchers at the University of Manitoba, Environment Canada and Agriculture and Agri-Food Canada. Those researchers examined how beef production changed from 1981 to 2011. […] Read more

Comment: Your most important asset
About 15 years ago, I was sitting in a classroom at Royal Roads University on Vancouver Island when the professor said something that shifted my priorities. Bev McPhee was the professor who changed how I saw things. McPhee had a lot of experience in the corporate world, and her insights were very welcome to those […] Read more
Comment: Farewell to 2020
There are events in a person’s life that are so pivotal, nothing is the same afterwards. They might be personal, such as falling in love, having children, or, on the negative side, a tragic accident. There are also life-altering collective events. In 1918, my great-grandmother’s two older brothers, just returned from the First World War, […] Read more

Bridging the rural-urban media divide
I’ve had a couple of conversations with producers recently about criticism of the beef industry in urban media and public perceptions of beef production. I’m also on a virtual ag media panel for the Advancing Women in Ag conference slated for Nov. 24 to 25, and one of the questions we were asked to cover […] Read more

Comment: Hold steady with China
In mid-September, our foreign affairs minister announced that Canada was dropping trade talks with China. “I don’t see the conditions being present now for these discussions to continue at this time,” François-Philippe Champagne told Nathan Vanderklippe of the Globe and Mail. “The China of 2020 is not the China of 2016.” This was hardly surprising […] Read more
Comment: The edge
My appreciation for price discovery and other elements of ag markets began with a visit to the Chicago Board of Trade back in 2014. At that time, the futures markets had moved to electronic trading, but the corn options pit was still lively. I talked to several people who’d worked at or near the Board […] Read more
Comment: How the sausage gets made
The pandemic has spotlighted packing industry concentration this year. People in the beef industry have been aware of these issues for some time, of course, but I even have friends outside ag who have been talking about it lately. Many want to see more, smaller federally inspected plants. It takes a tremendous amount of money, […] Read more

Comment: A little respect for consumers
Sometimes I wonder if we should scrub the word “consumer” from the pages of this magazine. Ultimately, doing so wouldn’t be a practical move, as it is good shorthand for the role of the people at the end of the supply chain. But sometimes I wonder if it seems derogatory, defining people by how they […] Read more

Comment: Riding towards next year country
If you ride horses, you’ve probably heard the advice about looking where you’re going. It sounds pretty basic, but it’s easy to get in the habit of looking at the ground. However, if you stare at the ground too much, you may end up there. Plus, you need to set some direction for your horse. […] Read more

Comment: The Antonine plague
There has been plenty of chatter about how this pandemic will change society. I don’t have any predictions worth the paper this magazine is printed on, so I decided to turn to history. One of the podcasts I regularly listen to is Tides of History. In April, they ran an episode on the Antonine plague, […] Read more
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