Sadness in losing long-time friend and colleague Adrian Ewins has prevented me from blogging sooner about his death on Sept. 22. The feelings were just a little too raw. The Producer has received numerous messages of condolence since his passing, from his friends, colleagues and news sources. Thank you to those who offered those thoughts. A memorial for Adrian was held in Saskatoon Sept. 30. The place was packed with his friends and relatives, and it was a celebration of his life more than a tearful acknowledgement of his death. That seemed fitting.
The newsroom seems a different place without Adrian. He was the longest serving member of the Saskatoon-based editorial team and I had the pleasure of working with him as news editor and managing editor and editor over about 18 years. Adrian was an expert in coverage of various issues surrounding the grain industry. He was an editor’s ideal employee – curious, knowledgeable, talented, patient, polite, ethical… the list is lengthy.
Though I no longer write a regular column for the Producer, I was offered the great privilege of writing a farewell for Adrian. For those who did not read it in the newspaper proper, here it is.
GOODBYE TO ADRIAN, FRIEND AND WRITER

One day when Adrian Ewins had 10 minutes to spare, he rattled off the opening page of a novel, a la Raymond Chandler. The pages are lost in Western Producer dust now, but they had the mystery writer’s same wry descriptions: “The blonde sashayed into my office like yesterday’s news and gave me a smile I could feel in my hip pocket.”
Adrian could write. Write well. Write quickly. Clearly, succinctly, professionally. News was his medium but his skills could have taken him anywhere. That it brought him to the Producer, where he stayed for more than 30 years, is an advantage this newspaper has, and will always have, over any other.
We lost Adrian on Sept. 22, just as autumn began. Cancer, a foe that he had battled for 23 years, took him from us.
He fought that disease while writing about Saskatchewan Wheat Pool machinations, railway reports, farm rallies, the demise of the Crow Rate, the mergers of prairie grain cooperatives and all manner of agricultural controversies that have unfolded in recent history.
His wry verbal comments on the issues and people he wrote about caused frequent laughter in the newsroom. It helped all of us keep things in perspective and provided gentle camaraderie in a place that has its unique stresses.
But for all his witticisms, Adrian was a professional, a journalist to whom the highest compliment was that a story was fair and accurate. Such compliments were many.
The Producer gave wind to his sails in the early part of his career here. Later it was the anchor that held him steady when the ravages of cancer made other aspects of his life so precarious.
We, his colleagues, watched his fight. We celebrated remissions and in the past year we learned the steely strength of Adrian’s will and dedication.
Adrian would laugh at that, and tell us not to be melodramatic. He’d have made a joke about allowing a column to become maudlin.
But he’d have to agree — he must know — the fairness and accuracy of this: he was part of the soul of this place, this newspaper, and we will miss him every day.
Raymond Chandler wrote that “to say goodbye is to die a little.”
We have.

Last Thursday a group of journalists learned more about restaurant beef promotions. As part of a tour organized jointly by Alberta Milk and Alberta Beef Producers, several media types heard Chris Svensson of Cara talk about Montana’s Cookhouse restaurants.
Cara, a Canadian company based in Vaughan, Ont., owns Montana’s, Harvey’s, Kelsey’s, Swiss Chalet Rotisserie & Grill, Milestones Grill & Bar and Coza Tuscan Grill restaurants.
But back up for a moment: Montana’s is Canadian? There is something odd about that. A restaurant that shares a name with an American state doesn’t exactly stand up and salute Canadian nationalism. What gives?

I asked Svensson about this apparent anomaly but he couldn’t enlighten me about the origins of the name. Upon calling the Montana’s guest services number, Justin couldn’t answer the question either. And a call to the Cara head office led to a series of telephone recordings that eventually arrived back at the beginning of the process without involving an actual human.
The Cara website indicates the company bought the Montana’s Cookhouse and Kelsey’s International chain between 1999 and 2002, so quite possibly Cara had nothing at all to do with the name selection.
The mystery remains, for the moment.
Notwithstanding this confusion, journalists did learn that Montana’s has a major steak promotion underway. The Canada Beef logo is prominent in its menus and in Alberta outlets, Alberta AAA beef is also mentioned.
“We’ve found that in Alberta, people are very passionate about Alberta beef,” said Svensson. The promotion is so successful that “steak participation” at the restaurant chain is up 125 percent so far in 2011, he said.
This appears to be one of the first restaurant promotions featuring the Canada Beef logo. As cattle producers are aware, Canada Beef is the new organization formed through amalgamation earlier this year of the Beef Information Centre, Canada Beef Export Federation and the Canadian Beef Cattle Research, Market Development and Promotion Agency.
As for Cara, a major player in the Canadian restaurant picture, it began as a news agency, the Canadian Railway News Company, which sold newspapers to the railway and ship travelling public. Over time it increased its food services to include airline service and eventually restaurants. According to the Cara website, the company now has annual revenues of about $2 billion.
It’s good to know that Canadian beef plays a part in it all.

No sooner did I blog about an on-line fundraiser for the Alberta Birds of Prey centre than along came another on-line fundraiser connected to farming and ranching.
A story I wrote about grizzly bears and ranchers in the Twin Butte, Alta., region led me to Cowboys and Carnivores. It’s an initiative to develop innovative solutions to conflicts with large carnivores like grizzly bears. Grizzlies are a protected species in Alberta. That means ranchers can’t harm them even if they eat crops, damage grain bins or kill livestock and pets.
So, it is left to ranchers, Alberta Sustainable Resource Development, Bear Smart and other interested groups like the non-profit Miistakis Institute to come up with solutions that protect private property while also protecting the bears.
Nobody has a firm count on the number of grizzlies in southwestern Alberta, although efforts are underway to do so. One bear is too many when it’s in your grain bin or silage bag, but on the flip side, grizzlies are an important and valuable part of the ecosystem.
It’s a dilemma. As one source told me, everybody likes bears but nobody wants bears.
But the bears are definitely out and about in the region, and hungry because there is a paltry wild berry crop this year. Berries are favoured by grizzlies as they tank up and prepare themselves for winter hibernation. Lack of berries means they must seek other food sources. Farmsteads and ranches look like easy pickings for some.

Here is a photo of a fresh grizzly bear track, which was taken two weeks ago near Twin Butte by my sister while she was fishing. Her rod is there for size comparison purposes; the reel is three inches across.
Cowboys and Carnivores group has already undertaken projects to help ranchers reduce interaction with grizzly bears. These include dead-animal pickup bins, electric fencing around feed storage areas and calving yards and bear-proof doors for grain bins.
The group has listed itself with the Shell Fuelling Change program, which donates $1 million each year to projects and organizations that improve and restore the Canadian environment.
You can learn more about it by clicking here.
The group has been running second in the $100,000 category for several weeks, with an urban commuter challenge and a turtle migration project vying for number one.

We’re fortunate at The Western Producer to have many freelance photographers who submit material. Sometimes they get themselves into their photographs, as Sharlene Bennie did in this one. Bennie and her family farm near Waskada, Man, and she has been submitting photos to the Producer for about 15 years. She tells me she takes photos just for the fun of it and views it as a hobby.
We’ve got a 15 year relationship with Sharlene, yet this is the first time we’ve been able to put a face to her name. Well, part of a face, anyway. I thought I’d share her photo, with her permission, so readers of the paper (and this blog) can see the woman whose photos we’ve had the pleasure of publishing over the years.
Sharlene says harvest is going well on her farm. They’re down to the flax now, having finished the canola and cereals. They were able to plant about 75 percent of their land this year but the other 25 percent was too wet. Even now, Sharlene tells me there is standing water in one of their pastures and she doesn’t think it will be gone by freeze-up.

The news has circular aspects. Certain events come around every year that require exploration: community fairs, harvest, statistical analyses. But a 25-year circle is unusual. It’s even more unusual when it involves an owl and a news reporter. One particular owl. One particular reporter.

Mr. Bogle is a great horned owl that was injured 25 years ago. Though nursed back to health, his injuries prevented him from surviving in the wild, so he became a resident of the then-fledgling Birds of Prey Centre in Coaldale. As a reporter serving the County of Lethbridge region back then, I wrote a story about Mr. Bogle, who was named for Bob Bogle, the Taber-Warner MLA at the time.
This summer, while doing a story for the Producer, I was reacquainted with Mr. Bogle. He is as handsome as ever, though the same cannot be said about me. Nevertheless, we are both 25 years older and still doing our respective jobs. I’m writing news and Mr. Bogle is a mascot and promoter of the Alberta Birds of Prey Centre, which continues to rescue, mend and release wild birds. It is also an educational resource and tourist attraction for those interested in birds of prey, their habits, their habitat and how they fit into the ecosystem.
Right now, Mr. Bogle is part and parcel of the centre’s efforts to raise money for apiary renovation and audio-visual equipment for community outreach. The centre is one of five non-profit, wildlife related causes selected for funding by Jamieson’s Vitamins.
It’s clearly a promotional device for Jamieson’s, which is running a contest via Facebook asking people to vote for their favourite cause among the five. Percentage of votes will equal percentage of the money each group receives.
People can vote every day, so I’ve been doing so out of respect for the centre and out of affection for the circumspect Mr. Bogle and his fellow feathered friends. Since I have to sign in every time I vote, with name and e-mail address, I expect to receive scores of Jamieson Vitamin promotions in the future. But if they can donate thousands of dollars to a cause I support, I guess I can read about vitamin promotions.
The promotion is entitled Call For The Wild and is accessible by clicking here. It runs until Sept. 18. The contest and particularly the Birds of Prey Centre, which is based in Coaldale, Alta., might be of special interest to farmers and ranchers because they are the ones who find most of the injured birds brought to the centre.
When I talked to Centre founder Colin Weir last week, he had just picked up two injured birds from farmers in the Etzikom and Taber regions. Once those birds are brought back to health, they will be released back to the wild. So will many of the 200 birds that are resident at the centre at any given time.
Most farmers and ranchers like birds of prey around because they are a check on gophers, mice, voles and insects.

A dairy farmer from California answers the above question in a hilarious way with this video. Warning: don’t try some of this stuff at home, for farm safety reasons.

Canadians grieved the death of NDP leader Jack Layton last week but some of us at the Producer were grieving the loss of a different Jack — former managing editor Jack Braidek.

He died Aug. 19 at the age of 84.
I never worked with Jack; his time at the Producer preceded mine, though I too once served as managing editor. When I became editor, Jack would stop in for the occasional visit to see how things were going at the newspaper and offer some of his perceptions on the world of farming.
On these visits he would often he’d have a copy of The Economist or some equally brainy magazine under his arm and would leave copies of interesting articles that might have implications for future agricultural reporting.
Our Jack was a farm boy who retained a lifelong interest in farming, farmers and the world agricultural picture. He had a keen appreciation for those who made contributions to the industry. He served on the board for the Saskatchewan Agricultural Hall of Fame, and would sometimes give us a sneak preview of who the next inductees were going to be.
We have some long-term employees at The Western Producer. The staff seems to be as loyal as the readers. And many of those who retire, as Jack did more than 20 years ago, still check in and retain an interest in the Producer and its activities. Jack was among those who did.
Our Jack is one of this newspaper’s “old guard” and the news of his passing was sad indeed. He was a gentleman and a gentle man. He will be missed.

Antibiotics are the cure for many human illnesses. And there aren’t many, or perhaps any, alternatives to antibiotics as a treatment for some of our ailments. If the organisms that cause illness become resistant to antibiotics, humans might be in big trouble. That’s why there is so much interest in the use of antibiotics, also called antimicrobials, in livestock production. The fear is that use or overuse in animals will create superbugs resistant to antibiotics, with adverse consequences for both humans and animals.
Well, you know that already, but I’m just laying some groundwork here, because there are two big conferences coming up that will explore the use of antimicrobials in livestock in efforts to gauge the level of risk and the degree of connection between antibiotic resistance and the use of these drugs for treatment or illness prevention in food animals.
On Oct. 30 to Nov. 2, Toronto is host to the Antimicrobial Stewardship in Canadian Agriculture and Veterinary Medicine Conference. The agenda features national and international experts on the topic. Here’s the overall synopsis: “Antimicrobial resistance in agriculture and veterinary medicine impacts animal welfare, public health, food safety and environmental health. The rapid emergence and spread of resistance is a major threat to current and future antimicrobial drugs. Antimicrobial stewardship encompasses the multiple approaches required to ensure the long-term sustainability of antimicrobial drugs.” See www.antimicrobialcanada.com for details.
An American conference is scheduled Oct. 26-27 in Chicago hosted by the National Institute for Animal Agriculture. It summarizes the meeting as “a dialogue among leaders from animal agriculture, public health, consumer advocacy and the media to discuss science and future strategies.” See details at www.animalagriculture.org.
What you can take from this, besides the dates and locations should you want to attend, is the fact that microbial use in livestock is being taken seriously and promises to be thoroughly explored.
It has already been the focus of scientific study, including one recent project involving four commercial feedlots in southern Alberta. Dr. Tim McAllister of Agriculture Canada provided me with a summary paper on this research and I plan to explore it more thoroughly in a Western Producer news story.
Essentially, scientists were encouraged by their findings, in that types and amounts of resistance were similar to previous studies, suggesting the situation is not markedly worsening. Resistance to modern and clinically important classes of drugs for humans was not observed to any significant extent, the paper said.
However, scientists see the need for further study because development of antimicrobial resistance is a foregone conclusion.
Stay tuned.

Are we, the public, too clean for our own good? Has the term “the great unwashed” fallen forever by the wayside? Would greater exposure to bacteria and germs give us stronger immune systems? These questions came to mind after the release of yet another study showing that farm kids are 30 to 50 percent less likely than town or city kids to develop asthma.
Yes, it’s one more reason to applaud the farming life.
According to a recent edition of the New England Journal of Medicine, household dust in a farm environment has a greater variety of bacteria and fungi. And human bodies require some of these to function properly. Precisely how germs and bacteria interact with people and their immune systems is another question, but the statistics relative to the farm population remain valid.

Tim McAllister, a researcher in ruminant nutrition and microbiology at the Agriculture Canada research centre in Lethbridge, mentioned the topic briefly following a presentation this spring. He was talking about E. coli, but the same basic idea of superior farm kid resistance also applies.
“There’s a large component of microbiologists that are going more towards the ‘we’re too clean’ theory, that we’re not exposed enough to microbes,” said McAllister. “Our immune systems don’t develop properly and as a result we become more susceptible.”
Visits by urban children to petting zoos often result in illnesses. This is why we now see those hand sanitizers sitting outside petting zoos and trade show booths involving farm animals. Kids raised without frequent exposure to animals apparently don’t have immunity to certain germs so a few trips to petting zoos are not going to do the trick as far as immunity development.
According to the Journal, exposure is needed at an early age and it wouldn’t hurt if your mother or grandmother were also a farm kid, thus able to pass on some type of immunity. In fact, that generational link might explain why asthma rates began increasing relatively recently even though the farm population has been shrinking for decades.
Statistics Canada says one in 10 children suffer from some type of respiratory condition. That’s a lot.
One sort of hesitates to crow about greater exposure to germs. Hooray, it’s dirty around here? That’s not something to celebrate. It’s not as though farm folk are any dirtier than urban folk, or any less cognizant of health dangers associated with germs and bacteria. In my experience, however, farm dwellers do find themselves in situations where quick washes are impossible or impractical. If you get splashed with manure in the corral or eat a spray of grain dust while on the combine, you’re going to have to live with it until you get near a place with running water. That could take awhile.
And let’s face it — there are greater challenges in keeping the house clean when you’ve got people tramping in with livestock hair, manure, soil, fertilizer, seeds, chaff and all kinds of other stuff clinging to their bodies and clothes.
Instead of fretting about it, we might as well embrace it. And be healthier for it.

It takes 12.5 minutes to watch this video on poultry and egg production but it provides an interesting view. Produced by the non-profit U.S. Poultry and Egg Association, the video explains production methods for these much-consumed commodities.
American farm groups are certainly taking a more proactive approach to explaining food production, and that is vital in the face of increasing battles with groups that are trying to eliminate animal agriculture.
The smaller and less affluent Canadian farm groups don’t seem to have progressed as far down the road to proaction as opposed to reaction.
We’ve heard before that many so-called “factory farms” are in fact owned by families, not corporations. But the sight of chicks travelling around on conveyor belts, as they are in this video, seems to support the “factory” impression, whether or not these conveyors and chicks are owned by families.
That is not to say that such production methods should be ignored or hidden. Quite the contrary. Handling systems are a reality, and one the video assures viewers is safe and capable of producing healthy food products.
Clearly the video plays to major consumer concerns, noting the use of all-natural diets given to poultry and the fact that no growth hormones are used.
As well, it notes antibiotics are used only under supervision of a veterinarian, and then only for disease prevention and control. This is acknowledgement of consumer concerns about antibiotic use in animals that some believe is linked to antibiotic resistance in humans.
The video also notes improvements to poultry production, refuting many consumers’ assumptions that chickens were healthier in “the good old days” when they more or less ran free.
Given today’s numbers of people and the chickens required to provide them with meat and eggs, the old ways wouldn’t be adequate or safe.
Or economical. According to data provided, it takes less than seven pounds of feed to produce a four lb. chicken today. In years past, it took 16 lb. of feed to raise a chicken to a four lb. size. How’s that for improved efficiency?
The video also notes that food safety isn’t just the responsibility of farmers or factories or wholesalers or retailers. Consumers themselves must take responsibility as well.
Have a look at the video and tell us what you think.