Weed notes: a meeting with MAFRI business development specialist

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Published on Thursday, May 9, 2013

By: Sid Lewis

myWestman.ca

At the end of April, along with six other weed control supervisors from the southwest region, I met with Laura Telford, business development specialist with MAFRI’s organic marketing sector.

It had been six years since we had met with OPAM to discuss both sides’ programs and to develop a plan to work together for our common goal, weed control. After a lengthy discussion we agreed to a plan that could be worked out in time and so far, in my perspective, we have been successful.

Once established, Laura is sending memos to organic producers in the southwest region as to the mutual agreement which I will discuss more in a future column.

Sometime in May MAFRI will announce a provincial package where all producers have to comply to sell their products within country and abroad. This is in answer to foreign buyers requesting a unified organic organization selling products, not a number of individual companies with different mandates.

With the winter conditions hanging on, producers are becoming very edgy because of not being able to do any seeding. I will try to tell a little story to make a smile. In the fall I had a picture of me driving my team of heavy horses pulling a disc.

It received lots of good comments from both young and “well experienced” readers. The gelding I was driving is much older than the mare and is well trained — the mare I had Wes Furguson from Minnedosa train to drive. The gelding had learned a number of bad habits and had to be corrected a bit. I can, in a matter of speaking, compare them to two sisters I know very well.

The older has developed some bad habits over the span of time while the younger, with proper training, hasn’t developed these bad habits!

If you have any question or concerns for Midwest Weed District, please phone 204-764-2617.