Helping Alta. farmers buy and sell

Mar 11, 2020

The Alberta Forage Industry Network is reviving Ropin’ the Web

By Diego Flammini
Staff Writer
Farms.com

Alberta farmers looking for an online marketplace to buy and sell hay, equipment, livestock and other ag goods will have one again.

The Alberta Forage Industry Network (AFIN) received $355,000 through the Canadian Agricultural Partnership’s Risk Mitigation Program to build and host Farming the Web.

Farming the Web’s predecessor, Ropin’ the Web, went offline last year during the provincial election period.

Ropin’ the Web “got caught up in the last election where due to government communication (the website) couldn’t operate,” Devin Dreeshen, Alberta’s ag minister, told Farms.com. “Since then we’ve been trying to figure out a replacement for it.”

When Ropin’ the Web became unavailable, producers informed Alberta Agriculture of the tool’s importance.

In April 2019, Mountain View County’s agricultural service board sent a letter to then NDP Agriculture and Forestry Minister Oneil Carlier to voice its concerns with the website’s removal.

“Many farmers and customers rely on the General Store (part of the Ropin’ the Web site) for listings of various items for sale or wanted in Alberta and locations across the Prairies,” the letter said, MountainView Today reported. “Now farmers are being advised to use Facebook or other listing services in replacement. This is not an acceptable replacement to government service.”

Farmers also let Minister Dreeshen know they wanted the service back once he took office.

“During our Bill 6 consultations last summer, we heard that farmers really appreciated having that one-stop shop to get pricing information,” he said. “We think the AFIN is going to be able to do a better job (at building and hosting the site) than government and give farmers the information they can rely on.”

Farms.com has reached out to AFIN for comment.

Video: Evolution of Beef Cattle Farming

The Clear Conversations podcast took to the road for a special episode recorded in Nashville during CattleCon, bringing listeners straight into the heart of the cattle industry. Host Tracy Sellers welcomed rancher Steve Wooten of Beatty Canyon Ranch in Colorado for a wide-ranging discussion that blended family history and sustainability, particularly as it relates to the future of beef production.

Sustainability emerged as a central theme of the conversation, a word that Wooten acknowledges can mean very different things depending on who you ask. For him, sustainability starts with the soil. Healthy soil produces healthy grass, which supports efficient cattle capable of producing year after year with minimal external inputs. It’s an approach that equally considers vegetation, animal efficiency, and long-term profitability.

That philosophy aligned naturally with Wooten’s involvement in the U.S. Roundtable for Sustainable Beef, where he served as a representative for the Colorado Cattlemen’s Association. The roundtable brings together the entire beef supply chain—from producers to retailers—along with universities, NGOs, and allied industries. Its goal is not regulation, Wooten emphasized, but collaboration, shared learning, and continuous improvement.