Farm and Food Care Saskatchewan Reports Increased Membership and Member Support

Dec 23, 2024

Farm and Food Care Saskatchewan reports, over the past year, it has seen an increase in its membership and a significant increase in the level of support provided by those members. Farm and Food Care Saskatchewan was formed in 2014 to bring the agriculture industry together in an effort to engage with consumers in Saskatchewan and across the country and ensure those with an interest in how their food is being produced have a truthful verifiable way to get that information.

Farm and Food Care Saskatchewan Executive Director Clinton Monchuk says members have recognised the importance of sharing the story of how food is being produced and, over the past eight years, have doubled their level of support.

Quote-Clinton Monchuk-Farm and Food Care Saskatchewan:

I think you can see that the writing is on the wall in other countries where that disconnect became too great. The connection between the grassroots farmers and those who are consuming the products became too great and that then influences public policy going forward. I think we're going to see a little bit of that in the next four years south of the border with some of the individuals that are being tased with food policy down south.

It begs the question, what can we do to make sure that if consumers do have questions that farmers provide answers for them and that's where Farm and Food Care Saskatchewan or Canadian Food Focus come into play and I think that's why a lot of farm groups, the farmers themselves see what we're doing as beneficial for the entire industry.

If we all do our part, whether it's individually as farmers or people in the agriculture industry or we combine our efforts with groups like Farm and Food Care Saskatchewan, we can do more and people are starting to see some of the benefit of that and definitely supporting us to a larger degree now.

Monchuk says, while consumers have always had questions, there is a recognition that farmers need to be more proactive through social media and other methods of engagement in answering those questions. He notes tracking has shown consumers who access Farm and Food Care Saskatchewan resources feel more confident and comfortable with our food production system.

Source : Farmscape.ca

Video: Wheat Yields in USA and China Threatened by Heat Waves Breaking Enzymes

A new peer reviewed study looks at the generally unrecognized risk of heat waves surpassing the threshold for enzyme damage in wheat.

Most studies that look at crop failure in the main food growing regions (breadbaskets of the planet) look at temperatures and droughts in the historical records to assess present day risk. Since the climate system has changed, these historical based risk analysis studies underestimate the present-day risks.

What this new research study does is generate an ensemble of plausible scenarios for the present climate in terms of temperatures and precipitation, and looks at how many of these plausible scenarios exceed the enzyme-breaking temperature of 32.8 C for wheat, and exceed the high stress yield reducing temperature of 27.8 C for wheat. Also, the study considers the possibility of a compounded failure with heat waves in both regions simultaneously, this greatly reducing global wheat supply and causing severe shortages.

Results show that the likelihood (risk) of wheat crop failure with a one-in-hundred likelihood in 1981 has in today’s climate become increased by 16x in the USA winter wheat crop (to one-in-six) and by 6x in northeast China (to one-in-sixteen).

The risks determined in this new paper are much greater than that obtained in previous work that determines risk by analyzing historical climate patterns.

Clearly, since the climate system is rapidly changing, we cannot assume stationarity and calculate risk probabilities like we did traditionally before.

We are essentially on a new planet, with a new climate regime, and have to understand that everything is different now.