The road to Paris goes through Bamako
The famous transcontinental road races, like the Paris-Dakar and the Budapest-Bamako rallies, have something in common with the race against climate change: they are gruelling, and they go through Africa. The global effort to respond and adapt to climate change must also go through Africa: through the fields of the farmers of the world who […]
TPP
Farming issues getting heard on Hill, agricultural lobbying up 50 per cent from last year
Representatives of Canada’s farming industry have been stepping up their lobbying on Parliament Hill in recent months, with trade being one of the main areas of discussion. Communication reports filed in the federal lobbyists registry show that some of the agricultural groups that have had communications with federal officials in April include the Canadian Cattlemen’s […]
Small farmers can feed a country, but they need help
WINNIPEG—There is good news to report from the field concerning the level of hunger in the world. It’s down. It has decreased by more than 100 million people in the last decade. But one in nine people in the world still experience chronic hunger. The Food and Agriculture Organization calculates that around half of the […]
Canada should reassert itself as a global leader in food security: Experts
It’s a ‘timely time’ to talk about food security; tomorrow is Earth Day and world leaders, including Prime Minister Justin Trudeau, will be gathering at the United Nations to formally sign the Paris climate agreement. And considering that climate change and the resulting weather unpredictability is a major contributing factor to insufficient food supplies, and […]
Extend women’s empowerment to the farm
WINNIPEG—Zione Mbewi is a great farmer. In recent years she increased yields on her small plot of maize in northern Malawi, and helped provide for her family. She also had big plans to expand her fields. Her husband, however, had other plans. He wouldn’t give her any more land. Since, as a woman, Mbewi doesn’t […]
The other Syrian refugees
Wherever I went in Jordan and Lebanon last month while visiting refugees from Syria, I heard people express gratitude for what Canada had done in accepting 25,000 people from that war-torn country. “Canada has a very good reputation here,” one aid worker told me. But while so many feel good about how Canada responded to […]
New Zealand high commissioner brings defence, trade background
“I arrived at the end of February, 3 o’clock in the morning, in the middle of a snowstorm.” What a welcome to Canada for New Zealand’s high commissioner, Daniel Mellsop. It was a few days after Ottawa got its last big dump of snow: 50-something centimetres of the white stuff. “That was fun, bringing a young […]
Tory MPs push Liberals on China’s canola crackdown
Conservative MPs from canola-rich ridings are pushing the Liberal government to dissuade China from bringing in stricter standards on canola imports from Canada. Randy Hoback, who represents Saskatchewan’s Prince Albert riding, called on Prime Minister Justin Trudeau to personally raise the issue with Chinese officials at the highest level, days after China’s government announced it […]
Drought tightens the screws on Zimbabwe’s most vulnerable
It was the fourth time Nelia had planted; and still, the rains were not enough to germinate her seeds. She had buried her first seeds in the Zimbabwean soil in December. But the regular, predictable rains she remembered from years past never materialized. The second and third crops also failed. I met Nelia in Zimbabwe […]
