Canada’s Farm Industry Could Be World Leader. Are Foreign Workers in The Way? Read Today’s Daily Five
The Daily 5 is Sharp’s essential reading list for what’s happening in the world today. Make sure to follow us on Twitter or subscribe to the Sharp Insider newsletter to stay up to date.
Here’s what we’re reading today.
1. Why Canada’s farm industry is ripe for change
“Australia provides a useful reality check here. Food Innovation Australia Ltd. estimates that of that country’s 57,000 food and agriculture businesses, only 5 per cent could be called ‘businesses of tomorrow’ that actively pursue new markets, are more inclined to take risks, are more connected to their end markets and continually invest in building both their capability and knowledge of these markets.’ Many have no desire to export. Many more wouldn’t know how. In September, the Australian government moved one step closer to creating an agri-tech business hub in Western Australia.
“Viewed through this lens, the challenge for the Canadian government is twofold. The effective administration and modernization of temporary foreign worker programs on the one hand and, perhaps as significantly, the urgent need to ramp up the sector’s economic potential with the invaluable support of those same workers and to set those workers on an advanced skills trajectory.”
2. No manifesto, no phone calls: Las Vegas killer left only cryptic clues
“In one mass shooting after another, gunmen have offered telling evidence of their motives: complaining of ‘baby parts’ after a shooting at Planned Parenthood, sympathizing with the Islamic State with a Facebook post on the day of the San Bernardino shooting, asking members of Congress if they were Republicans before pulling the trigger at a congressional baseball practice.
“But in the four days since Stephen Paddock’s attack in Las Vegas — a shooting rampage that left 58 dead and hundreds seriously wounded — what drove him has remained a mystery, vexing the public and putting enormous pressure on federal and local investigators to find answers.”
3. Puerto Rico’s governor says ‘let’s talk’ after Elon Musk says Tesla can rebuild the island’s power grid
“Tesla Chief Executive Elon Musk said he will speak to Puerto Rico’s governor about helping get the hurricane-hit island’s power grid back online.
“On Thursday, Musk tweeted that his company has built solar grids for many small islands, adding that there ‘is no scalability limit, so it can be done for Puerto Rico too.'”
– CNBC
4. Here’s how Breitbart and Milo smuggled Nazi and white nationalist ideas into the mainstream
“A cache of documents obtained by BuzzFeed News reveals the truth about Steve Bannon’s alt-right ‘killing machine.'”
5. Top tech workers who helped make technology so addictive are disconnecting themselves from the internet
“Drawing a straight line between addiction to social media and political earthquakes like Brexit and the rise of Donald Trump, these Silicon Valley refuseniks contend that digital forces have completely upended the political system and, left unchecked, could even render democracy as we know it obsolete.”
+1: Mark Zuckerberg would like the authority to rule, please – Longreads
