Visiting rural Canada, seeing the impacts of high gas prices, is gut-wrenching
I recently visited my mom in Saskatchewan, in a little town up in what’s called the province’s northeast but really isn’t. It’s the parkland border between farms and forests, no further north than Edmonton. The region is sparsely populated; if you drew a circle around Momstown with a 65-km radius, that circle would include maybe…
Experimental crop absorbed CO2 equivalent to a vehicle burning 35,000 litres of gasoline
Annual crops are the farmer’s bread and butter, the crops they rely on most, but at least one type of perennial grain is proving much more beneficial to the environment. A crop of perennial rye absorbed a substantial amount of carbon dioxide, or CO2, a University of Alberta study showed, while an annual crop had no…
Rural learning programs help medical students to become rural family physicians
Ponoka family doctor Greg Sawisky grew up in Kelowna, B.C., before heading to the University of Alberta for medical school. After a couple of shadowing opportunities in Fort McKay and Stettler, he threw himself into the Faculty of Medicine and Dentistry’s Rural Integrated Community Clerkship program and hasn’t looked back. “There is something so wonderfully…
Community connections and a wide scope of practice make an appealing mix for career opportunities
For rural communities, health care can be difficult to access. Throw in part-time clinic hours, winter weather or a global pandemic, and those accessibility challenges only become more apparent. But, in Alberta, many services that once required an appointment with a family doctor can now be provided by a pharmacist – including some prescriptions, referrals,…
Reinvesting in local co-operatives could help attract people to rural communities and keep them there
Should we be looking to the past to help boost the future of the province’s rural economy? A hundred years ago, local co-operatives were a fairly common way of doing business in rural areas. Now the Alberta Centre for Sustainable Rural Communities is researching ways to make this old model work in a modern economy. “It’s a…
Research could help ranchers adapt to climate change and preserve vital ecosystems
Ranchers who frequently rotate cattle between fields – resembling how bison once moved across Canada’s prairie – build drought resistance into Western Canada’s grasslands, according to a series of University of Alberta studies designed to find ways to improve the net carbon balance of grazed grasslands and nurture more resilient landscapes. “The way we manage…
The global plant protein market could double by 2026, reducing the need for meat
While there are those who demand greater access to agricultural land for city dwellers, especially since COVID-19 has pushed many to seek space far from major cities, others want to protect our land from real estate speculators. It’s a real point of tension and an important debate. But beyond this, our approach to protecting farmland…
But the way we communicate risks through food labelling needs to change
Health Canada is reportedly likely to treat gene-edited crops differently than genetically-modified crops, or GMOs. That would be the right move. That means the oversight provided by the Canadian Food Inspection Agency would look very much like what we see for conventionally-bred crops. This issue is obviously far removed from consumers, but it will certainly…
Mixes agriculture with AI to help ranchers make better business decisions
New University of Alberta research is mixing artificial intelligence with agriculture to help cattle ranchers. An analytic “armchair rancher” mobile app is being developed to help beef producers better manage various aspects of their herds. The smart device application will aid them – by leveraging the masses of data they already collect daily on factors…
Cultured meat could succeed but it won’t be easy
Leonardo DiCaprio has just used his A-list magic powers again by investing in two American cultured-meat startups, Aleph Farms and Mosa Meat. This is the same actor who invested in a vegetable protein company before the plant-based phenomenon was a thing. Beyond Meat is now worth more than US$8 billion. DiCaprio saw it coming before…