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...
Read More September 2018—Nobody likes to get beat over the head with “you should do this” messages. A large percentage of people don’t like to get told what to do at all or by any means: Beat over the head. Rap on the knuckles. Kid gloves. But how about subtle persuasion? Here is a series of memorable events...
Read More March 2018—Chuck Penner, in his canola outlook in this issue, forecasts Canadian canola acres at 23.75 million, another record for queen canola. Is this too many for long-term canola sustainability? Think back to 2014. The Canola Council of Canada launched its Keep It Coming strategy, with a target of 52 bu./ac. average yield and a production...
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