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Parasites
Anyone who has ever kept sheep and raised lambs for
market knows that parasites internal and external
are a perpetual problem which just doesnt go away. As
sheep farmers, raising lots of lambs for our marketing
coop (Northumberlamb) in Nova Scotia, we learned a lot
about parasites. Some parasites can be found in the
wool on the sheep for sale, while others can be found in
auction barns among the buyers. Many others can be
found hiding under corporate blankets.
We learned the hard way about the cost of parasites in and on sheep and lambs and how to manage
them. Manage because eliminating them, like eliminating weeds, is simply a romantic notion or an industrial dream. More practical, and ecologically sound, was
learning to keep the parasite burden at an acceptable
level by managing the whole farm to minimize their
presence and their destructiveness. Rotational grazing
was a key to this, but this was hard to achieve on
marginal land which was good grazing but not possible
to make hay on, so we still had to use, cautiously,
specific de-worming drugs/chemicals. Reflecting on this
experience, it occurs to me that the parasites must
make some contribution to the farm ecology, but I am
not yet clear as to what it may be.
Thinking about the food system, the same question arises: how many industrial-corporate parasites
can the food system support?
It is not in the interest of a parasite to kill the host,
and for the food system to be sustainable, the parasite
burden has to be minimized. Parallel to the strategy of
rotational grazing on the sheep farm may be the
increasing number of local/regional food initiatives
that started with CSAs, farmers markets, community gardens and all sorts of organic gardens, farms
and small food processing enterprises, community kitchens and direct relationships
between food providers, restaurants, and
institutional food services. These can
greatly reduce the parasite load in local
food systems even while they can be
seen as the foundation stones and building blocks of a new ecologically sound,
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Backgrounder
The Government is committed to supporting Canadas farmers and our world-class agriculture industry,
to ensure they remain competitive on world markets and
serve the needs of Canadians.
The Agricultural Growth Act is a bill designed to
modernize and strengthen federal agriculture legislation,
support innovation in the Canadian agriculture industry
and enhance global market opportunities. The bill proposes changes to the suite of statutes that the Canadian
Food Inspection Agency (CFIA) uses to regulate our agricultural sector:
- Plant Breeders Rights Act (PBR Act)
- Feeds Act
- Fertilizers Act
- Seeds Act
- Health of Animals Act
- Plant Protection Act
- Agriculture and Agri-Food Administrative Monetary
Penalties Act
Supporting innovation
The proposed amendments will encourage innovation and research in Canadas agricultural sector. Some
examples include:
1. Strengthening intellectual property rights for plant
varieties in Canada under the PBR Act to:
- Encourage increased investment in plant breeding in
Canada
- Motivate international breeders to protect and sell their
varieties here
- Align current statute with the 1991 Convention of
International Union for the Protection of New Varieties of
Plants (UPOV 91).
- Provide Canadian farmers with access to the latest
innovative varieties that have been bred to enhance crop
yields, improve disease and drought resistance and meet
specific international market demands
2. Expanding the authorities in the Feeds Act, Fertilizers
Act, Health of Animals Act and Seeds Act to include
international scientific research when approving new agricultural products in order to:
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weed management scientist Thomas Mueller, but overuse had a cost as it selected for resistant weeds. Among
the biggest concerns is a family of weeds that includes
waterhemp (Amaranthus rudis). . . A 2008 to 2009
survey of waterhemp in 41 Missouri counties revealed
glyphosate resistance in 69%. Surveys of weeds from
some 500 sites throughout Iowa in 2011 and 2012
revealed glyphosate resistance in approximately 64% of
waterhemp samples.
A survey conducted last year in Missouri shows
that weeds resistant to multiple herbicides with completely different biological modes of action are also on
the rise. Of weed populations sampled in Missouri,
43% are now resistant to two different herbicides; 6% are resistant to three herbicides; and
0.5% are resistant to four separate herbicides.
In Iowa, 89% of waterhemp populations sampled now resistant to two or more herbicides, 25% resistant to three, and 10%
resistant to five separate herbicide
classes.
Approving Contamination
Weeds
Fertilizer Fibs
Farmers have been over-using potash (potassium) as a
result of poor soil testing. Current soil testing practices
miss potassium because it tests only the fraction of
potassium that is called exchangeable. The assumption that this is the fraction that feeds the plant is
simply not valid, say soil scientists. There are other
forms of potassium that do feed the plants.
WP, 28/11/13
Ketchup
In 1909, Henry John Heinz decided that Leamington,
Ontario, was the best place possible to grow tomatoes.
Now it will be interesting to see if the Heinz name
survives, at least in Leamington, now that Berkshire
Hathaway, the ownership (i.e. investment) vehicle of
Warren Buffett, bought Heinz last June for $28 billion
a bit more than your monthly grocery bill! Along with
its partner, Brazilian hedge fund 3G Capital, the new
version of Heinz decided to save some bucks and close
the plant (along with two other Heinz plants in the
USA). The Leamington plant employed 740 people at
about $25 per hour, and had been in business for 104
years making ketchup.
It is ironic that as
Canadians are becoming
more interested in buying
locally-produced food, our
supermarkets have less access to products that are
actually grown in Canada, said John Sutherland, NFU
Ontario President. According to Statistics Canada, the
total area used to grow vegetables declined by 13.5%
between 2006 and 2011, due primarily to the loss of
processing capacity. The only way to reverse this problem is to refocus Canadas food policy to promote food
sovereignty instead of commodity exports.
In recent years, the CanGro fruit, tomato and
vegetable plant in Exeter, north of London, ON and its
peach plant at St. Davids in the Niagara region, along
with the Bicks pickle plant in Dunnville, ON were
purchased by US-based multinational corporations and
then closed. The local farmers who grew vegetables for
them have either quit, now export produce for lower
prices or have switched to growing crops such as
soybeans, corn and wheat. Increasingly, grocery stores
are buying food that used to be grown in Canada from
companies that have shifted production to lower-cost
processing facilities in India, Brazil, United States,
Mexico and elsewhere.
NFU, 20/11/13
Protection Racket
Hawaii Update
Large biotech companies like Syngenta, Monsanto, Pioneer, Dow and BASF have farms on Oahu, Kauai and
Molokai, but theyve never operated on Hawaiis Big
Island and now they never will.
Farmers of North America (FNA) members support the ten year exclusive period given to basic registrants after an innovative product is registered. They
also believe that the original registrants deserve to be
fairly paid for relevant and legitimate data, but what
has happened, however, says FNA, is that the PMRA
handed basic registrants the tools to control the process. These are the very companies that will do almost
anything to keep a generic product out of the market.
Thats BASF, Syngenta, Dow, Monsanto, needless to
say.
FNA is a member based farm business alliance
with the single mission of Maximizing Farm Profitability.
www.fna.ca Farmers of North America, 6/12/13
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