VOLUNTEERS FEEL THE BURN
BRANDING PRAIRIE FRUITS
Firefighters responding to more diverse calls in rual Manitoba » PaGe 3
Prairie Fruit Growers Association lanches new program » PaGe 18
SERVING MANITOBA FARMERS SINCE 1925 | Vol. 70, No. 21 | $1.75 May 24, 2012 manitobacooperator.ca
Windstorm sandblasts crops Factors to consider before reseeding include switching crops By Allan Dawson co-operator staff
Head baker makes sure the slice is right Cigi’s Tony Tweed hangs up his apron after four decades of breads, bagels and croissants
W
inds of up to 100 kilometres an hour t o p p l e d g ra n a r i e s, uprooted trees, ripped off shingles and sandblasted crops in south-central Manitoba May 14. In the aftermath, around 400 reseeding claims were submitted to the Manitoba Agricultural Service Corporation’s (MASC) insurance division as of May 18, said David Van Deynze, manager of claim services. “Canola, by far, accounted for most of the claims,” he said. “Cereals can handle those conditions better.” The corporation doesn’t know yet how many acres those claims represent or how many will result in reseeding, Van Deynze said. There were fewer claims farther west, despite strong winds there too. Van Deynze suspects canola in that area was seeded later and therefore less of it had emerged. Before ripping up a crop and reseeding farmers need to make a claim and ideally have a corporation adjuster assess it, he said. However, if a claim has been registered, but not assessed farmSee WINDSTORM on page 6 »
After 40 years, Cigi’s head baker Tony Tweed is as passionate as ever about helping customers understand how to get the most from Canadian ingredients. Photo: Laura Rance
By Laura Rance Co-operator Editor
Publication Mail Agreement 40069240
T
ony Tweed knew about the unique quality of Canadian bread wheats long before he was recruited to Canada in the mid-1960s to establish its first commercial baking school at the Northern Alberta Institute of Technology in Edmonton. “I worked with a lot of Canadian wheat flour in England,” the Britishb o r n a n d - t ra i n e d b a k e r s a i d . “Everybody knew that if you were making good biscuits, you used Australian flour, and if you wanted to make good bread, you used Canadian flour.” Tweed had actually been seconded by the Canadian International
Development Agency and was planning to start mobile baking schools in Peru when he learned his wife was expecting. The family changed their plans, and he was looking for a new job in 1972 just as the fledgling Canadian Grains Institute, as it was then called, was looking for a head baker. The rest, as they say, is history — 40 years of it to be exact. An iconic fixture in the Cigi baking technology centre, Tweed has spent the past four decades working with customers from 115 countries on the technical aspects of products, travelling to dozens of countries as well as helping teach the 38,000 or so participants in the more technical courses Cigi has offered. What he learned upon his arrival at
Cigi, as the Canadian International Grains Institute is now called, and what he has conveyed to customers ever since, has been the infrastructure that is behind Canada’s quality, everything from the variety selection, to farm practices, to clean handling and quality segregation systems, to a skilled team of troubleshooters who help processors sort out technical glitches. “You are really selling Canadian grain, but you are also selling Canada — clean air, fresh water, nice people, and the systems are honest here,” Tweed said. “It is a very unique place to work. Where else do you get to meet people from all these different See HEAD BAKER on page 6 »
PLUS: Province moves to protect well water » pg 20