#165 of 165 articles from the Special Report:
Food Insider
Greenhouses heated with passive solar heat can be used year-round in B.C., says Michael Bomford, a professor of sustainable agriculture at Kwantlen Polytechnic University. Photo by Marc Fawcett-Atkinson
Finding sustainable produce in a Canadian winter is cause for nightmarish confusion. Months of eating in-season vegetables cabbage, carrots, celeriac compete with the looming environmental impacts of imported food.
Many people buy local, believing the tomatoes, peppers, and other vegetables grown locally in greenhouses are more sustainable than imports that are trucked thousands of kilometres to Canadian shops.
But shopping sustainably doesn’t always mean buying local. A tomato grown in a Mexican field and trucked north is about six times more climate-friendly than one raised in a Canadian gas-heated greenhouse.
Marc Fawcett-Atkinson, Local Journalism Initiative
Agritech proponents say it is the future, but critics are unconvinced.
Image Credit: WIKIMEDIA COMMONS/Lianolans Wimons April 05, 2021 - 6:00 AM Robots, blockchain, and high-tech plankton might soon be producing food for British Columbians. The B.C. government last week announced $7.5 million in funding to support 21 agritech companies in the province. Agritech a suite of technologies that includes robotics, artificial intelligence, and vertical farms is a fast-growing sector, with analysts expecting it to reach about US$18 billion globally by 2022. The province’s so-called “concierge” program will help connect these businesses to investment capital, navigate government funding programs, and find land including protected agricultural land.
The province’s so-called “concierge” program will help connect these businesses to investment capital, navigate government funding programs, and find land including protected agricultural land. “The pandemic has reinforced the importance of food security and the role of the B.C. agricultural sector,” said B.C. s Jobs, Economic Recovery, and Innovation Minister Ravi Kahlon. “The food system was feeling extreme pressure, and for us as a government, we want to ensure we’re pandemic-proof (and) able to produce the food we need to shorten the supply chain, so we don’t need to feel that pressure again.” The recent announcement follows a controversial January 2020 report written by a provincial food security task force that argued B.C.’s future food security lies in agritech. Food advocates and academics in the province were unconvinced: By March 2020, they had issued a rebuttal noting social, economic, and sustainability issues with the approach.
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Texts a Calgary teen sent to her mom shortly before she was thrown to her death from her father’s careening Jeep should not have been allowed into evidence, an appeal filed on the dad’s behalf says.
In a notice of appeal filed by defence lawyer Alias Sanders, Michael Bomford says the hearsay evidence should have been ruled inadmissible in his Court of Queen’s Bench trial.
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Sanders wants Bomford’s convictions on charges of drunk driving and dangerous driving causing death and bodily harm tossed by the Alberta Court of Appeal.