November 2019—Futurist Bob Treadway encourages farmers to pay attention to people and politics and markets and technology so they can “see around the corner” for events or shifts that could dramatically change the business environment. The key, Treadway says, is to see what might be coming and have the business nimble and flexible to adapt. Export...
Read More September 2019—The saying “If it ain’t broke, don’t fix it” doesn’t work for weeds. People promoting effective weed management have their own expression that is pretty much the exact opposite. Tammy Jones, weed specialist with Manitoba Agriculture, shared the catchphrase for a Canola Watch article back in June. “If something is working, change it.” Jones credited...
Read More March 2019—When Corteva announced its new name last year, it also unveiled a catchy set of simply-worded core values. One of them is ‘Be curious’ with the tag line: We innovate relentlessly. We accelerate our pace of innovation to create solutions that will deliver abundant high-quality food, now and for the future. They had me at...
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January 2019—In his book 1491, Charles C. Mann wrote about the Americas before the arrival of Christopher Columbus in 1492. The book includes insights too numerous to mention in this small space, but I’ll focus on one insight most relevant to Canadian agriculture and the goal of many farmers: Indigenous people knew how to greatly enhance...
Read More November 2018—What do you do? Jennifer Dyck tested me with this question at CROPS-A-PALOOZA in Portage la Prairie in July. Jennifer is the manager of Canola Eat Well for Manitoba Canola Growers and she used her ‘PALOOZA station to coach farmers and farm industry people on how to talk to consumers. She led every encounter with...
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