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The chemicals found on Stone’s farm likely came from biosolids, or nutrient-rich sewage from municipal utilities.
News

The curious case of tainted milk from a Maine dairy farm

The farm’s cow’s manure and their milk showed high levels of perfluoroalkyl substances

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Reuters – For Maine dairy farmer Fred Stone, the discovery in 2016 that his cows were producing tainted milk has since brought financial ruin and threatened to shut down a century-old family business. Now state regulators and health experts are investigating whether the contamination could reflect a much broader problem for farms that used similar […] Read more
U.S. President Donald Trump listens to a question as he speaks to reporters at his Mar-a-Lago estate in Palm Beach, Florida, Mar. 29, 2019.
News

Trump climate deregulation could boost CO2 levels

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Plans by United States President Donald Trump to roll back climate change regulations could boost U.S. carbon emissions by more than 200 million tonnes a year by 2025, according to a report prepared for state attorneys general released in early March. Why it matters: The increase from the world’s second-biggest greenhouse gas emitter behind China […] Read more
The debate over whether climate change is caused by human activity has delayed acceptance of the need to change behaviour.
News

Evidence for man-made global warming hits ‘gold standard’

Man-made climate change increasingly clear in satellite records and can no longer be ignored, scientists say

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Reuters/Oslo – Evidence for man-made global warming has reached a “gold standard” level of certainty, adding pressure for cuts in greenhouse gases to limit rising temperatures, scientists said Feb. 26. “Humanity cannot afford to ignore such clear signals,” the American-led team wrote in the journal Nature Climate Change of satellite measurements of rising temperatures over […] Read more
The fight in Washington over the Renewable Fuel Standard will have major implications for the future state of the ethanol industry.
News

U.S. ethanol future tied to bumper crop of D.C. politics

Politics is playing a significant role in the future of ethanol, which now uses more than 30 per cent of the corn in the U.S.

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Glacier FarmMedia staff – Ethanol producers in the United States achieved another record year in 2018, with production climbing 1.9 per cent to 16.1 billion U.S. gallons processed from about 5.6 billion bushels of corn, or about 38 per cent of the 2017-18 crop. But ethanol producers are not content. They are vexed by the […] Read more
News

Making gasoline from wood pulp

Renewable energy: A Swedish researcher is using a pulp and paper byproduct to power cars

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Lund, Sweden | Reuters – Might tree roots, twigs and branches one day be used to power cars? That’s what a Swedish researcher is hoping after developing a pulp byproduct that, on a modest scale, does just that. Chemical engineering scientist Christian Hulteberg, from Lund University, has used the black liquor residue from pulp and […] Read more
Greg Judy attempts to rejuvenate streams on the farms he rents and buys.
News

Eye on Mother Nature pulls farm from brink

Diverse rotations, water management and attention to erosion restore environment, farm profitability

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Mimicking nature has been key to a financial turnaround for Greg Judy and his family. The Missouri-based livestock farmer told a crowd gathered at an Ecological Farmers Association of Ontario (EFAO) meeting about his farm’s transformation. “We’re going to see another dustbowl,” Judy warned during a workshop for EFAO’s recent four-day annual convention in London, […] Read more
Doug Griffiths consults with rural communities across North America
News

13 ways to kill your… farm

Observations about rural communities could also apply to farms

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Doug Griffiths has spent a lot of time looking at rural communities and he’s come up with 13 things that communities do to themselves to lose business, momentum and size. Griffiths spoke at the recent Ontario Federation of Agriculture annual meeting. His 13 points could apply to farms just about as well as rural communities. […] Read more
Turning over more land to energy production could have implications for food security, said scientists.
News

All hands on deck in climate change battle

Everyone and everything needed to hold climate line, scientists urge

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Thomson Reuters Foundation | London – Last-ditch efforts to hold climate change to the most ambitious target set by governments will likely require using every available technique rather than picking and choosing the most attractive ones, climate scientists say. Dramatically reducing the use of coal, planting huge swathes of land with carbon-absorbing forest or powering […] Read more
Natural gas lines will need to be built to move the gas to areas of Ontario that don’t have it.
News

Province aims to clear regulatory block to natural gas expansion

A new act will allow a mix of investment options to fund more natural gas access

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The Ontario Conservative government is opening up the way to greater investment in natural gas infrastructure in Ontario that don’t have it. Premier Doug Ford announced at the 2018 International Plowing Match (IPM) in Pain Court that a new Natural Gas Act would be introduced soon that will allow for public, private and consumer investment […] Read more
Farmers who sign on to projects are also compensated for the time required to manage and maintain each project, on a 
per-acre basis.
Crops

Conservation planning is about more than the environment

ALUS project numbers continue to grow across the province

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Is it possible to grow better crops by removing specific areas from production? Some Ontario farmers participating in Alternative Land Use Services conservation programs think so. They say they also see conservation projects as beneficial to the overall profitability of their farm business. Why it matters: On-farm conservation is expensive, but given the right partners, […] Read more

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