Every Monday, TVO.org talks Food Chain — snack on these policy, nutrition and food safety nuggets from around the province and beyond.
Farming takes to the skies in southern Ontario
Canada’s largest soil-testing lab has developed new drone technology that eliminates the need to upload data about farming to a remote server. This is significant given the struggles that farmers in rural Ontario have with reliable, fast internet access. The drone surveys give farmers comprehensive, accurate information on soil health and temperature that allows them to treat their fields more precisely, enhancing yields.
Syrian war prompts first-ever seed withdrawal
A withdrawal from the world’s end-times seed bank has been made for the first time ever after the conflict in Syria threatened crop seeds stored outside of Aleppo. The International Centre for Agricultural Research in Dry Areas requested 325 boxes of seeds from the Svalbard Global Seed Vault to regenerate varieties lost to the war, according to an article in Wired.
TPP negotiations moving forward
Canada may be in the midst of an election, but the other nations involved in the Trans-Pacific Partnership are eager to ink a deal. Trade Minister Ed Fast is heading to Atlanta this week where chief negotiators hope to finalize an agreement. Though the negotiations are being conducted in secret, Fast publicly said that the automotive industry remains a sticking point. Previous negotiations have hung up on the issue of dairy and poultry protections in Canada, where heavy tariffs are imposed on imports. Over the weekend news broke that Canada was going to open up 10 per cent of the market to American dairy products, but Fast says that’s false.
Crowdfunding campaign for eight-year-old injured on farm tops $10,000
Donations have been pouring in for an eight-year-old boy who lost part of his leg in a farming accident in St. Mary’s, Ontario. A Go Fund Me campaign set up by South Perth councillor Melinda Zurbrigg after Colton Hawkins’ injury raised more than $10,000 in just six days. Farming remains high on the list of most dangerous professions in Canada, ranking ninth out of ten in a 2014 report.
Read this before you scrape your plate
Canada wastes a whopping $31 billion worth of food each year, about $861 per person — 51 per cent of which is in the home. Food writer Sasha Chapman decided to track her family’s waste and wrote about what they found during the month in The Walrus. She also toured Second Harvest, a charitable organization that rescues food from the dumpster and makes it available to people in need. The conclusion after a month of waste-watching? Being organized and properly planning meals can make a big difference — Chapman’s family cut theirs by 17 per cent through meal planning. Pair this story with one from NPR’s The Salt on creative ways to cut food waste, like cooking pancakes with sour milk and performing the float test to check if eggs are still good.
Update: The original version of this article stated Canada wastes $37 billion worth of food per year. In fact, the figure is $31 billion. The article has been updated to reflect that information.