Manitoba Hosting Summit On Canadian Soil Health

The 2019 Summit on Canadian Soil Health is being held this week in Manitoba.

 

Jim Tokarchuk is the executive director of the Soil Conservation Council of Canada.

 

"We're trying to expand our audience a little bit to people who may not be as directly connected to soil health and soil conservation as farmers are," he said. "We're trying to, in addition to sending out most recent science information on soil health and conservation, we're trying to involve more people in understanding why soil and healthy soil does lead a direct path to their well being."

 

Tokarchuk talked about how the Manitoba soils are holding up with all this rain.

 

"We're doing a pretty decent job in most places in Manitoba of managing soil. I see a lot of crop residue staying on the fields this year, which is good. We haven't seen a lot of tillage that we've seen in previous years and maybe that's just the weather. I think that for most of the Red River Valley area, southern Manitoba, our soil is in good enough shape that this isn't going to cause massive sheet erosion or any sort of damage like that."

Video: Finding a Balance of Innovation and Regulation - Dr. Peter Facchini

Regulations help markets and industry exist on level playing fields, keeping consumers safe and innovation from going too far. However, incredibly strict regulations can stunt innovation and cause entire industries to wither away. Dr. Peter James Facchini brings his perspective on how existing regulations have slowed the advancement of medical developments within Canada. Given the international concern of opium poppy’s illicit potential, Health Canada must abide by this global policy. But with modern technology pushing the development of many pharmaceuticals to being grown via fermentation, is it time to reconsider the rules?

Dr. Peter James Facchini leads research into the metabolic biochemistry in opium poppy at the University of Calgary. For more than 30 years, his work has contributed to the increased availability of benzylisoquinoline alkaloid biosynthetic genes to assist in the creation of morphine for pharmaceutical use. Dr. Facchini completed his B.Sc. and Ph.D. in Biological Sciences at the University of Toronto before completing Postdoctoral Fellowships in Biochemistry at the University of Kentucky in 1992 & Université de Montréal in 1995.