Time to Enjoy the Production of our Farming Families

☀️Summer is here!

For those of us in the Northern Hemisphere, it is now time for us to kick back, spark up the BBQ and enjoy a glass (or two or three) of our favourite beverage. Savannah and I fully plan to do this over the coming weeks and we hope that you will similarly be doing the same, and taking the time to enjoy your summer.

In the past 10 months, SAIFood has published 46 blogs. To our luck, a number have come from guest bloggers and from the students in my Agriculture Policy class. Yet all blogs require review, edit suggestions and revisions, graphics, in addition to the writing and revising of our own blogs. We enjoy being able to provide the diversity of information and knowledge about sustainability, agriculture, innovation and food. It is demanding though. So, we are going to take a break from writing blogs over the next two months and will come back to you refreshed and energized to share new insights, evidence and observations.

For those of you with backyard or city gardens, I hope the weeds aren’t too bad for you this summer. I find myself wishing that the vegetables I’m trying to grow were as prolific at growing as the weeds I continually remove. Spending time hoeing in the heat of the day, certainly makes me appreciate just how significant the innovation of herbicide tolerant crops are for the small landholders in developing countries who still rely on hoeing their fields for weeds on a regular basis. This is labour that no one enjoys.

We will be scanning the news over the summer, looking for interesting ideas for blogs this fall. Should you see something that you think would make an interesting blog, please feel free to send your idea along to us and we’ll look into it. We are always wanting to know what our audience is interested in knowing more about, so feel free to shoot us an e-mail or tweet, we love hearing from our readers.

Thanks for your support of the blog over the past academic year. It has been a pleasure interacting with some of you and exchanging thoughts and ideas. It has also been a pleasure to see how much our presentation of facts and evidence about modern agriculture and the innovative technologies it uses, threaten those who hold alternate views.

Whatever your summer plans, or wherever they may take you, if you see a farmer in their fields, be sure to give a wave of thanks for all their hard work in producing the food we will be eating this summer.

Have a great summer and we will see you in September!

Stuart and Savannah