(Nigel Maxwell/farmnewsNOW Staff)

By Alice McFarlane

Agriculture Roundup

Agriculture Roundup for Monday August 26, 2019

Aug 26, 2019 | 10:51 AM

A University of Alberta Professor has told beef producers that fear and anxiety are crushing rationality.

Timothy Caulfield was a keynote speaker at the Canadian Beef Industry Conference in Calgary earlier this month. He said teaching critical thinking skills will be a way the industry can help consumers understand food production.

Caulfield said he thinks we’re in the era of misinformation and fear as headlines around health and food are particularly scary.

Caulfield hosts the TV show A User’s Guide to Cheating Death

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If you want to solve a problem leave it in the hands of a 14-year-olds 4-Her.

Mac Dykeman is a member of a 4-H poultry club at Langley, B.C.

She was concerned when her orders of newborn chicks from the United States arrived dead.

It prompted her to create of a new shipping container. Her design is a cardboard box with a raised floor for a heating pad, different ventilation holes, sloped sides and a circular enclosure inside which keeps the chicks from crushing each other in the corners.

Dykeman was able to research the problem through the 4-H Canada Wide Science Fair for students in Grades 7-12.

Her award-winning design will part of the 2019 International Science and Engineering Fair in Phoenix, Arizona as part of Team Canada. This fall she travels to another international science competition in the United Arab Emirates.

Dykeman will use her winnings from these competitions to apply for a patent for her new design to ship birds in a more welfare-friendly way.

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The American Farm Bureau Federation says Wisconsin continues to lead the U.S. in family farm bankruptcies.

The federation says from July 2018 through June 2019, Wisconsin farmers filed 45 Chapter 12 bankruptcies.

The total was five fewer than the previous 12-month period, but still first in the nation.

The Milwaukee Journal Sentinel points to depressed milk prices hitting Wisconsin’s thousands of dairy operations.

Ronald Wirtz, regional outreach director of the Federal Reserve Bank of Minneapolis, also points to Wisconsin’s smaller average farm size as a factor.

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alice.mcfarlane@jpbg.ca

On Twitter: @AliceMcF