The handing down of family farms is not only essential to ensure the long-term future of Europe’s agricultural sector, but also to steer it toward more sustainable practices.
Dig into soil and you’ll find rock dust but also thousands of living species.
ChristinLola/iStock/Getty Images Plus
Rock dust is only part of the story of soil. Living creatures, many of them too tiny to see, keep that soil healthy for growing everything from food to forests.
Dairy cows try and stay dry in their barn as flood waters rise near Agassiz, B.C., in November 2021.
THE CANADIAN PRESS/Jonathan Hayward
Despite improvements in disaster response management since the Abbotsford floods of 2021, long-term animal welfare remains woefully underappreciated in B.C.
Solar panels shade grassland at Jack’s Solar Garden, an agrovoltaic farm in Longmont, Colo.
Matthew Sturchio
Artificial intelligence can process large amounts of chicken vocalizations, identifying patterns in the birds’ communications.
In the last two decades alone, Canada has lost nearly 150,000 farmers with the current population standing at just 260,000. Barriers to farming need to be addressed to mitigate this loss.
(Shutterstock)
The impact of agricultural issues extends far beyond the farming community. Current social crises, including biodiversity loss and food inaccessibility, affect everyone.
Managing methane from belching cattle is a top innovation priority.
Lance Cheung/USDA
Food systems are increasingly disrupted by climate disasters, while also being a major contributor to climate change. World leaders at COP28 vowed to do something about it.
Second-generation dairy farmer David Janssens walks through a pasture of dairy cows at a farm in Surrey, B.C., in August 2018. Canadians and policymakers should support systems that allow for valuable food industries to flourish, rather than dismantle them.
THE CANADIAN PRESS/Darryl Dyck
If Canada wishes to preserve domestic farms and enhance food security, officials must have limits on what they can concede to American and other foreign interests.
In Canada and around the world, biosolids are widely used to improve agricultural farmland soil. Biosolids being sprayed on an agricultural field.
(Branaavan Sivarajah)
We need to pay close attention to the potential impacts that high levels of microplastics might have on environments and find ways to reduce microplastic levels in Canada’s wastewater stream.
Mexican migrant workers harvest parsley on a farm in Wellington, Colo.
John Moore/Getty Images
Agriculture is one of the most dangerous industries in the US, with workers exposed to vehicles, chemicals and heavy equipment. Women working on farms face another risk: sexual assault.
Farmed landscapes have become less hospitable habitats for insects.
Protasov AN/Shutterstock
While mRNA vaccines are designed to last longer in the body than mRNA molecules typically would, they are also tested to ensure they are eliminated from livestock long before milking or slaughter.
Raising kids on a farm, as Kerissa Payne is doing, isn’t simple.
Photo courtesy of Kerissa and Charlie Payne
Access to affordable child care affects farm productivity, safety and ultimately the nation’s food supply. Farm families across the U.S. are struggling without it.
A farmer at the Roots Community Food Centre urban farm in northwestern Ontario harvests Gete-Okosomin squash in summer 2021.
(C. Levkoe)
A guaranteed basic income is a promising tool for contributing to sustainability and justice across agriculture and fishing sectors.
Agrivoltaic farming — growing crops in the protected shadows of solar panels — can help meet Canada’s food and energy needs.
(Alexis Pascaris, AgriSolar)
Canada can meet its carbon emission reduction targets, make food cheap again and open up a gigantic trade surplus with the U.S. by shading farm crops with solar panels.
Seedlings growing in a greenhouse in the Outaouais region of Québec. It’s time to think deeply about the future of our food system.
Photo by Bryan Dale
In light of the changes caused by the pandemic, it is clear that food autonomy as a frame of reference for reorganizing the Québec food system is not enough.
Spiders can be effective pest control agents.
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Spiders liquefy their prey in order to consume it, and this makes it challenging to determine what spiders eat. A new approach that uses DNA barcoding is helping researchers figure out spider diets.
PhD Candidate, School of Social Sciences, University of Tasmania, and Senior Research Consultant, Institute for Sustainable Futures, University of Technology Sydney