Organic Farmer Worries About Weedkiller Sprayed in Ditches in Rural Manitoba

CBC News:  
The Rural Municipality of Morton defends use of Tordon 101 for weeds.  Details here.

PLT: I despair over the lack of sensitivity which is all too common among our local councillors. They sometimes remind me of gunslingers from the Old West who shoot first and ask questions later. Do they even know what's in the stuff they so liberally spray around with apparent abandon? Here's what Wikipedia says about Tordon 101.

The maker of Tordon 101, Dow AgroSciences, has seen fit to give it a code name - "Agent White." It is a powerful herbicide which the US military sprayed as a defoliant during the Vietnam War. It was one of the so-called "rainbow herbicides" that included the more infamous Agent Orange. Unlike Agent Orange, Tordon 101 does not contains the potent poisons known as dioxins. But it does contain 2-4-D, another potent weedkiller which robs plants of their ability to absorb life giving, airborn nitrogen. And its other active ingredient, Picloram is, or was, contaminated with two known carcinogens. Dow is said to have greatly reduced the amounts of both of those in 1985.

Trouble is, determining what is an "acceptable minimum" level for carcinogens is tricky, to say the least.

I happen to know the central figure in this story, Mr. Neufeld. He is a sincere, intelligent and hard-working organic producer who genuinely wants to help make the world a better place. He does not deserve the blame-game his RM seems to be playing here.

Barbed Wire and Politicians Spell Bad News for Australian Bats

Bat Conservation International
The past few months have been rough on flying foxes in Australia. In September, the state of Queensland reinstated fruit-growers' right to kill flying foxes, which had been prohibited as inhumane. Full story here.

Why I’m Voting Green

By Chris Hedges - Truthdig



The November election is not a battle between Republicans and Democrats. It is not a battle between Barack Obama and Mitt Romney. It is a battle between the corporate state and us. Details here.

Chris Hedges - columnist

Frankenstorm: Has Climate Change Created A Monster?

National Public Radio (US)

It was not a good year for people, weather and climate. The winter was strangely warm in many places and the summer ridiculously hot. As a large fraction of the country suffered through extreme or even extraordinary drought many folksnaturally wondered, "Is this climate change?"  Full story here.
Sandy wrecks havoc in southern Ontario. (CBC photo)

PLT: Below is a comment I prepared for a blog published by Andrew Revkin of, wait for this, the prestigious New York Times. While he may fall short of an outright "denier," he is what I am calling "a sower of seeds of doubt." In one of his latest posts,  Revkin opines that any suggestion that climate change is behind Hurricane Sandy is, in effect, too simplistic! 

Toronto's Glass Towers Take Awful Toll on Precious Bird Life

New York Times

No one is sure, but Toronto's massive banks and other skyscrapers may be making it the most deadly city in the world for our precious, migratory birds. Details here.

Cape May Warbler. PLT photo

Monsanto's Lies and the GMO Labeling Battle

Common Dreams

You may have never heard of Henry I. Miller, but right now he is attempting to determine the future of food in this country.  And he has enormous financial backing. Details here.

Long Overdue Canada's Boreal Caribou Strategy Released

Manitoba Wildlands
"...almost all the Alberta herds — most of which are in the same region as the oilsands — are very unlikely to survive."

A July 28, 2011 Federal Court decision forced the Federal Minister of the Environment, Peter Kent to revisit his March 2011 decision to refuse emergency protections for woodland caribou in Alberta affected by oil sands development. The Canadian Government was given until September 1, 2011 to implement a draft recovery strategy for woodland caribou. 

Senate Recommendations on a Grey Seal Cull: the Good, the Bad, the Outrageous

International Fund for Animal Welfare


The Canadian Senate, our Senate, has just released its report on the “management” of grey seal populations on Canada’s East Coast and recommends spending millions in taxpayer dollars on an “experiment” that is so incredibly flawed that, whatever the result, it will be entirely unreliable.  Details here.

Photograph: Joe Cornish/NTPL

Winnipeg Busted for Illegal Poop Discharge

Government of Manitoba

Manitoba Conservation and Water Stewardship advises charges have been laid against the City of Winnipeg under the Environment Act as a result of the city’s South End Water Pollution Control Centre releasing a large amount of partially treated sewage into the Red River over a prolonged period of time.  Details here.

"Sandy," AKA "Frankenstorm" Lashes the East Coast

New York Times: Hurricane Sandy, now battering the Bahamas, is expected to head up the East Coast over the weekend and possibly collide with a winter blast, producing what weather forecasters fear could be a historic and potentially devastating storm for a large swath of the Northeast and mid-Atlantic early next week. Details here.

CARL JUSTE / TRIBUNE MEDIA / MCT

Residents find higher ground as the water level continues to rise in Leogane, Haiti, Friday. Leogane has endured five consecutive days of rain due to the aftermath of Hurricane Sandy.

PLT: The deafening silence emanating from the US campaign trail about climate change can only be further evidence of the disconnect between politicians and power on the one hand, and reality and science on the other. How many "Frankenstorms" will we have to endure before they remove their heads from their a...., er I mean, the sand and start telling it like it is?
Please also read: "IT'S GLOBAL WARMING, STUPID!"

Canadian Canola Production - a Riches-to-Rags Tale?

Manitoba Co-Operator - Commodity News Service Canada

A healthy canola field. PLT photo

 Canadian canola exports during the 2012-13 crop year were expected to come in at a record-high level -- but smaller-than-anticipated production is now predicted to dim those prospects. Full story here.

PLT: Crop production stories, chalk-full of numbers such as this one, are both important and interesting, I'm sure. But, as a consumer with an environmental conscience, I am frequently disappointed at the lack of context in such stories in the overall scheme of things. For example, in my own rural area, coffee-talk is rife with reports of a rare canola disease this year which, I am told, is a fungus spread by an insect which thrives in warm weather. That bug was apparently carried from the south where record heat and drought enabled it to thrive. I THINK the disease is called Aster Yellows (Phytoplasma) (l).  It was, this year, worse than it has ever been and shattered the hopes many farmers had harboured earlier in the season, for bumper crops. (At least one farmer told me he believes it cut his expected yields by almost one-half.) Yet little of this seems to reach the public airwaves.

So just when are the media going to begin telling you, the farmer, the truth about what climate change is doing to you and the world's food supply, and how you, with your ever-larger, fuel-guzzling, greenhouse-gas-producing machines, may be contributing to it, yourself?