farms

Nova Scotia Federation of Agriculture’s Living Labs project aims to help farmers better tackle climate change.

The province says the spraying is aimed at minimizing the risks spongy moths pose to forests, farms, orchards and urban trees and to prevent the moths from becoming permanently established. 

Ontario is straining under labour shortages in health, early childhood education, long-term care, agriculture, construction, logistics and computing, among other sectors. Why are so many jobs in the province going unfilled?

Real estate prices have soared across Canada in recent years, and farmland is no different. From B.C. to the Maritimes, farmland near urban centres is being eyed by developers seeking to turn fields into suburban malls and cul-de-sacs.

The past decade has seen exploding interest in an approach to farming focused on soil health called regenerative agriculture, which proponents say can help fix the climate crisis. The problem? No one agrees on what regenerative agriculture actually means.

"It's been pretty nice this time around," said Kootenay Co-op general manager Ari Derfel. "We've been living in a year of emergencies and this time — seeing people just come in and get what they need and not freaking out — it's been kinda calming."

Similar scenes have played out across southern B.C. in recent days as the province grapples with an unprecedented storm that flooded Merritt, Princeton, and much of the Fraser Valley under metres of frigid, dirty water.

Forty-five governments led by the U.K. pledged Saturday to spend billions on transforming the world's farms, fisheries and forests in an effort to make our food more sustainable. 

With previous climate conferences coming under fire for serving unsustainable meals, the organizers of this year's United Nations meeting in Glasgow, Scotland, have highlighted efforts to serve climate-friendly meals. But critics say those measures — and the food itself — aren't enough to emphasize the urgent role food plays in saving the planet. 

A dry spring left the fields on Karen Klassen's farm parched, and now the Manitoba farmer is bracing for them to get worse. Any day, an unprecedented heat wave smothering western North America will roll over her land, turning sun-baked soil to dust and leaving a poor crop of peas, wheat, and barley in its wake. 

“Extending our quarantine program will provide peace of mind to workers, employers and communities that we are doing everything possible to prevent the spread of COVID-19,” says B.C.'s Agriculture Minister Lana Popham.

A popular insecticide used on farms across Canada has been shown to have dire effects on ground-nesting bees, according to new research from the University of Guelph.

He has worked in food system development for eight years and is now the provincial manager of Can You Dig It at the Public Health Association of BC.

The more than 9,000 temporary foreign workers in B.C. are essential to the function of the agriculture industry — almost 6,000 plant crops and do other farm work, usually for minimum wage.

Even in a pandemic, seeds germinate, livestock grow — and farmers keep working. That rhythm, vital to Canada’s food supply and rural economies, belies the uncertainty farmers face from bad weather, markets — and now, COVID-19. It’s an uncertainty advocates hope will ease with changes to the Canada Emergency Business Account announced Monday.