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Home My WebLink AboutTimes Advocate, 1993-01-06, Page 10' Illlb1011.Ybeate, January 6, 1993 Page 9 One Foot in the Furro chillers were rising in Crediton on Monday. Tiide show to accompany conference TORONTO - AU farmers and -miller persons or groups interested ..,in organic or ecoiogical farmingare .iinvited to explore different aspects • -of organic agriculture at the 12th -.Annual Organic Agriculture Confer- ence, January 29 and 30 in Guelph. Under the theme "Meeting the Organic Demand", participants will Swine seminar at +tolmesville HOLMESVILLE - The Ontario Ministry of Agricul- tare and Food is presenting a Swine Seminar called "Survi- tval in the Nineties". A very informative program begins at 9:30 a.m. in the Go derich Township Community Cen- tre in Holmesville on Tues- day. January 19. 1993. Ken McEwan of Ridge - town College. :along with James Reesor of {Ice Ontario Farm Products Marketing Commission, will be speak- ing about the "Competitive- ness in the Ckuariq Swine, In- dustry" "Feeding for sen" is a topic being adikaased : by Richard Smelaki of Hakim !Purina. Another big Area of pro- , duction to consider is "Build- ing Design for Survival, Low Cost Housing Alternatives". Frank Kains, an OMAF En- gineer will be providing 4ome current ideas in 'this very important arca of hog production. Healthy pigs are a must for profitable pork production. Dr. Tim Blackwell and Dr. .John Martin, Health Manage- ment Section with the gnta- rio Ministry of Agriculture and Food, will be discussing "Biosecurity (Keeping Dis- ease Uut)" . In order to participate in this , swine seminar, prc- regisnation is required by Monday, January 11. Regis- tration cost is $20 per person or $30 per couple. Please make the cheque payable to "Farm Management Exten- sion Fund". Mail to the Clin- ton OMAF efface, 100 Don Street, Box 159, Clutton, On- .tario NOM 11.0. For further information call 482-3428 or 1400465-5170. have the opportunity to learn about and discuss crop improvement, pro- duction, marketing, product devel- opment, video making and many more aspects of organic .farming. The conference will fake place at the University Centre of the Uni- versity of Guelph. The conference is sponsored by the Canadian Organic Growers, the Ecological Farmers;As.iation of -Aatario ;Gibiph Atifillailral Alter- , nativestihe&erguuc Crop Improve- ment Association (Ontario), the So- ciety for Biodynamic Farming and Gardening. the Ontario Ministry of the Environment and the Ontario Ministry of Agriculture and Food. The Friday session will feature an academic symposium combined with a poster session, hosted by Dr. Ann Clark, on "integrated Farming Systems Research Methods". Fol- lowing this, the public will have the opportunity to discuss how to meet consumers' organic choice during a televised public forum. The Saturday session, which is the general farmers conference, will start off with speakers presen- tions inihe morning, featuring the _�whole.farm system and the organic • demand. The afternoon will be en- tirely devoted to workshops, on a wide variety of topics: biodynamic farming, horticulture, beef and dairy production, community - supported agriculture, notation, transition, composting, and market - mg. A ata0c,.stiow ll_ mt r the .alsafeesace,-:with a berm exhibits set up by a variety of or- ganizations, companies and individ- uals. The cost for advance registration •far the Saturday session only is $25 e+per person or $30 per farm or group (maximum of three participants). Registration after January 18 or at the door will.cost $35 per person or 540 per farm or group. Registraulpt fpr students is $5. To register for the academic sym- posium, call Dr. Ann Clark, at the Crop Science Department, Univer- sity of Guelph, (519) 824.4120, ext. 2508. To register for the farm- ers conference on Agriculture Con- ference "Meeting the Organic De- mand", P.O. Box 1030, Guelph, Ontario, N1H 6N1 or phone Hugh Martin, OMAF, (519) 631-4700. Ask most urbanites to describe a typical firmer and you'll probably get an answer similar to this: "He wears a tractor hat, always frontwards, never backwards, wears bib overalls, -rubber boots and chomps on straw. He is not a very good talker. He has trouble expressing himself. He is not very social." Perhaps the words would not be the same but the picture is similar. Many years ago white trying to train a skittetish buckskin mare, I had my leg broken in three places when the mare fell on my leg. On crutches for more than three months, I vividly remember going into a restaurant one night and placing the crutches on the floor. The ends protruded into the aisle. Two young men came in. One nipped over the crutches. "Watch where you're going, you dumb farmer," said the other youth. 1 thought it typical at the time. Anything "dumb" -- read stupid -- is from the farm. I have been tying to dispel that picture for 30 years. Unfortunately, there are some farmers out there in the back forty Who fit the picture perfectly; not many, mind you, but just enough to give life to the myth. But if the Ontario Agricultural College at the University of Guelph has its say, farmers will no longer fit the redneck definition. Officials there announced last month that the enure curriculum is being revamped so that graduates will be better at expressing themselves, better at accepting new ideas and better at accepting those who are different from them. Dean Rob McLaughlin said the aim of the school now is to continue to turn out the technically competent graduate as well as to make that gradu- ate better able to get -along in modern society, a society that changes al- most as often as we change underwear. Right now, they are too 'intolerant of different views, primarily because they come from insular, rural backgrounds. They are not critical thinkers. ' Again, i am not so sure I agree with this entire picture as painted by the dean. I have been dealing with farmers for 40 years and some of the most forward -thinking men and women I have ever met were on the farm. 1 suppose, though, that there are enough who still think as their fathers and grandfathers did to cause the eggheads at OAC some concern. Certainly, it will do the students no harm to be exposed to better litera- ture and current social'issues to a greater degrees than they are now. Another aspect of the new curriculum that illicits cheers from this cor- ner is the Scrapping of what students called "scribblings for idiots," an English course. Instead of taking an English course, ag students will have their pipers marked by English graduates who will force proper English on them. For those who are functionally illiterate in grammar and punctu- ation, a special computer course will have to be passed. You do wonder how functionally illiterate people can get into universi- ty, don't you? I taught for 25 years in a community college and I can tell you that some high school students get through, get into university, and have trouble spelling their names. I had one class -- and these were journalism students, mind you -- and 12 of 28 spelled the name of the college they were attending wrong. And they wanted to make a living working with words? Go figure. I'm sure the revamped curriculum at OAC will improve the graduates even though OAC is considered now to be one of the best in the world. first genetically identical quadruplet calves born GUELPH - The world's fust .quadruplet'calves developed from a split four -cell embryo have been born at the University of Gqb1pli. The four bull calves - name ohe, Paul, George and Ringo - are mon- ozygotic quadruplets. They are the result of an embryo production and micronnanipulation de- veloped by research f w Naida ,Loskutoff of Guelph'sBio- technology EmbryoA .Ab�oratory (ABEL), under the direction of bio-' medical science pxofessoo: Kath Betteridge. The calves all started life as the sante one -cell embryo, called a zy- gote. loskutoff produced the zy- gote itself by the in vitro fertiliza- tion of an egg she harvested from cow ovaries collected at a , local abauoir. Atter fertilization. the one - cell embryo was cultured in an in- cubator. At the four -cell stage, Los- kutoff micruseopically divided it into four separate cells. Each Dell was isolated and allowed to devel- op in the incubator for five more days, then transferred into a recipi- ent surrogate mother cow by veteri- nary Scientist Walter Johnson. Each of the embryos developed normally into a full-term calf, ge- net -wally identical to its three sib- lings. Independent DNA analysis by the Saskatchewan Research Council confirmed the calves were all from the same embryo. "This is the-j4ust,{iu►e.we've been able to oleate in es.keshat . says Loakutoff. "Four individuals have never been produced from a single egg in this manner." The tis signif scan t for s: • The simple and efficient proce- dure can be performed routinely by anyone with:iairnimal micromanipu- lation experieuce. is • The entire.ugatc sage of embryo�MMM�t was done in vitro I� . fertilization and culture. In , some embryo bio- technology laboratories. Ibis in it- self is a feat. • Genetically identical animals represent tremendous cost savings for research programs. Researchers normally require large herds to overeonne variabilities resulting from conventional genetic diversity in animals. But it takes few& ge- netically identical animals to render ,reliable research results. • The industry bas been strug- gling with cloning by nuclear trans- fer, the other popular form of em- bryo manipulation. For reasons not well understood, nuclear transfer yields extremely large calves that can create major birthing problems. Split -embryo calves do not elisplay this problem. In addition, nuclear transfer calves - which originate from the same nuclei but different eggs - arc not genetically identical. This research is supported by the Premier's Council Technology Fund, Semex Canada, the Natural Scion ees and Eagiaeering Research Council and the Ontario Ministry of Agricultureand Food. • WARN UP TO WINTER lour 1315M(REp itg . 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