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Originally published:

August 2018
Vol. 104 Issue 8

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Stories In This Edition

Shaved, showered and shampooed

New regs rolled out for pot growers

Egg farm decommissioned

Richmond cranberry grower honoured

Editorial: Ground for reform

Back Forty: Facing a tenuous future of feeding the world

OpEd: Wildlife federation’s audit request full of holes

Armyworm posing little risk this season

Letters: Dairy feeling price pressures

Abbotsford waits for clarity on ALR guidelines

Chicken quote to increase 20% by 2020

Dairy incentive days this fall

Aquilini seeks exclusion for former nursery

Business risks looms large at national meeting

Maple Ridge denies exclusion bid for dairy

Fire damage won’t delay blueberry shipments

Good weather marks return to normal conditions

Cherries set for near-record crop this season

Laser system has potential for bird control in crops

Hazelnut growers get replant funding

Gulf Islands farmers want rules respected

Young Agrarians push small-scale premium

Value pinned on local ecosystem services

Cash crunch threatens BC berry growers

Hop sector brewing a bright future

IPM for SWD a tall order, says crop consultant

Audit request takes aim at cattle ranchers

Forage action plan nears completion

Site C fund directors get to work

Abattoir recommendations delayed till fall

Research: Smart flowers have the tools to attract clever bees

Science should underpin colony management

Abbotsford tour puts spotlight on innovation

Summer fun at Stock Show

Business smarts needed for farm success

Wannabe: Signs of hope’s fulfilment

New day for Century Growers

Woodshed: Role playing turns up heat for Deborah

Seasonal pastime

Community is key crop for Kelowna farmers

Jude’s Kitchen: Crisp and cool entertaining

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4 days ago

A standing-room only crowd of more than 250 people attended a public hearing the Agricultural Land Commission hosted in Langley Monday night regarding a proposal to include 305 acres controlled by the federal government in the Agricultural Land Reserve. More than 76,000 people have signed an online petition asking municipal and provincial governments to protect the land from development, and for the federal government to grant a long-term lease to the Heppells. Read more in this morning's Farm News Update from Country Life in BC. conta.cc/3XYXw6k ... See MoreSee Less

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Your weekly farm news update

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The agricultural news source in British Columbia since 1915 January 25 2023 Surrey ALR inclusion cheered A standing-room only crowd of more than 250 people attended a public hearing the Agricultural L
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Mike Manion Pitt Meadows City Councillor

1 month ago

Christmas tree growers in BC are seeing strong demand this season and prices remain comparable to last year. But the number of tree farms has decreased dramatically over the past five years and the province will increasingly need to look elsewhere if it wants to meet local demand. More in this week's Farm News Update from Country Life in BC. ... See MoreSee Less

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Christmas trees in demand

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Christmas tree growers in BC are seeing strong demand, with high quality trees making it to market. “The market is good. We’ll probably outdo last year and last year was one of our best years…
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2 months ago

Another four poultry flocks in the Fraser Valley have tested positive for avian influenza over the weekend -- 15 in the last week alone. There are 60 farms currently under quarantine in BC, more than any other province in Canada and three times that of Alberta, which ranks second. Officials maintain the virus is being spread by dust and groundwater and not farm-to-farm transmission. No farms in the Interior have tested positive this fall. ... See MoreSee Less

Another four poultry flocks in the Fraser Valley have tested positive for avian influenza over the weekend -- 15 in the last week alone. There are 60 farms currently under quarantine in BC, more than any other province in Canada and three times that of Alberta, which ranks second. Officials maintain the virus is being spread by dust and groundwater and not farm-to-farm transmission. No farms in the Interior have tested positive this fall.
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Avian influenza virus can be killed by chlorine at no higher a concentration than is present in drinking water, so unless farms are using untreated groundwater in their barns I don't see how it could be a source of transmission. www.researchgate.net/publication/5594208_Chlorine_Inactivation_of_Highly_Pathogenic_Avian_Influen...

2 months ago

In a surprise move, Lana Popham -- hailed at the recent BC Dairy Industry Conference as a key ally of the agriculture sector -- has been replaced by Abbotsford-Mission MLA Pam Alexis as part of a cabinet overhaul today by new BC premier David Eby. Popham will now oversee Tourism, Arts, Culture and Sport. The two ministers worked closely together following the atmospheric river events last fall. ... See MoreSee Less

In a surprise move, Lana Popham -- hailed at the recent BC Dairy Industry Conference as a key ally of the agriculture sector -- has been replaced by Abbotsford-Mission MLA Pam Alexis as part of a cabinet overhaul today by new BC premier David Eby. Popham will now oversee Tourism, Arts, Culture and Sport. The two ministers worked closely together following the atmospheric river events last fall.Image attachment
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Goes to show how far-removed our current government is from the agricultural sector. To put someone in this position who has no farming background is a slap in the face to all of our hard-working producers.

Going to be a heck of a learning curve. Helping the agricultural community recover from the biggest natural disasters in history, handling the avian influenza outbreak that is threatening our poultry industry, dealing with a crisis in meat processing, managing ongoing threats from climate change, supporting producers who are facing unprecedented inflation in an industry with very slim margins to begin with..... to name a few of the challenges our new Minister will have to face all with one of the lowest budgets of any ministry. I wish her the best of luck but I hope she's got a lot of support around her.

Best of wishes in your new position

Congrats to Pam, cool to see a Fraser Valley based ag minister but also so sad to see Lana reassigned . I have no doubt she will do an amazing job in her new role.

Will be missed by #meiernation

Bryce Rashleigh

Nooooooo!

Lana did a shit job and now we have a minister with no farming background at all. Aren’t we lucky..

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2 months ago

The scale of this year's avian flu outbreak now rivals the massive outbreak of 2004. An additional 13 commercial farms in the Fraser Valley have tested positive in the last week. To date, 49 commercial farms and 1.2 million birds have been impacted. CFIA is struggling to keep up with depopulation of sick birds. ... See MoreSee Less

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AI outbreak rivals 2004

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The scale of this year’s outbreak of highly pathogenic avian influenza now rivals the massive outbreak of 2004 that saw farms throughout the Fraser Valley depopulated. An additional 13 commercial…
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Commercial operations need to reevaluate their stocking densities and overall health and welfare of the animals within their systems if they are ever going to have a fighting chance against this virus.

Yup cause food shortage

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Armyworm posing little risk this season

Insect ravaged Island, coastal forage crops last year

July 29, 2018 bySean Hitrec

PORT ALBERNI – Researchers continue to look for answers to last year’s unusual armyworm outbreak on Vancouver Island and in the Fraser Valley while affected farmers remain vigilant against the pest.

Seemingly out of nowhere, the very hungry caterpillars started chowing down on forage crops across southwestern BC last summer. In its moth form, true armyworm (Mythimna unipuncta) reportedly drifted north from the US in historically large numbers. The larvae devastated healthy grass and corn crops while experts scrambled to find out what was going on. After a year, the threat seems to have died down and research into the phenomenon has begun.

“What we think is happening is that the growing conditions are really good in Northern California [an area that hosts the insect year-round] where they’ve had more rain over the last handful of years following a long drought,” says Tracy Hueppelsheuser, an entomologist with the plant health unit of the BC Ministry of Agriculture. “That means there’s lots of adult [moths] present to blow on the winds to new locations.”

The resulting damage to grass and corn varied across affected areas.

“I know that some fields were 100% write-offs and I know that other fields had a much lower percentage of impact,” she says.

Hueppelsheuser has continued to monitor insect traps in the affected areas. She’s determined they likely did not survive the winter because the traps were empty from December until this spring. Armyworm are not able to diapause – or rest – when the temperature gets colder. This limits their ability to overwinter, and the empty traps indicate the population died out.

When armyworm moths did show up this year in late spring, Hueppelsheuser says the numbers were too low to cause alarm. Not much is known about their migrations to BC other than they seem to drift up here from time to time on wind currents.

“When we went back and looked at museum records, there were moths in the museum collections over the last hundred or so years. That shows the moth does come up here sometimes,” she says. “It doesn’t usually show up in great numbers, so it’s not that it’s new to British Columbia, it’s just we’ve never seen so many that anyone can recall.”

While the insect has more than one generation per growing season in BC, she says the population is low enough that the first generation this year is no cause for alarm.

“Based on trap catches, it looks like the first generation is very low and we shouldn’t be having problems,” she says. “[But] there’s a second generation and we’ll be wanting to watch for flight this August.”

The second generation started to damage crops in the middle of August last year, so she urges farmers to continue to keep their eyes open.

Alberni recovering

Meanwhile, farmers in the Alberni Valley are still recovering from the march of the armyworm last summer. The loss of forage caused some to cull their herds, while others had to import feed from off-island sources.

George Haack has been farming the valley since 1969 and normally has enough hay to sell on the side after feeding his beef cattle. He said he lost around 500 round bales in total last year.

“They didn’t do mine until third cut in September,” he says. “Basically, all of the sudden the grass was disappearing and so I just went out and cut it all down, baled it and bagged it. I only got 50-odd [round] bales when I normally get 300.”

Haack culled his herd over the winter and is down to 32 from 130 head last year. He took it as a sign he needed to change pace.

“I’ve always had a job on the side to pay for my bad habit of farming, and it’s not just a little farm,” he says. (He farms 120 acres.) “I’m 61 now and I haven’t had a holiday since ’92. The wife and I were talking, and we were just going to downsize anyways and make it a little bit easier on ourselves.”

Others paid to keep their herds alive.

It cost Terry Shannon $150,000 to maintain his herd of 400 grass-fed dairy cows over the winter. His 500 acres of grassland is enough to support his entire herd, but the armyworms took over.

“I had to buy over 400 tons of hay,” he says. “At this time last year already, I was feeding about three tons of hay a day just because we didn’t have any real grass growth of any significance after about the last week of June.”

If this wasn’t bad enough, the insect’s picky eating habits upset the balance of plants in his fields.

“On third cut, all the regrowth was pretty much clover and [as a result] I ended up losing a couple animals with bloat, which I never pexperienced before,” he says.

This year, Shannon’s fields are in repair. He has already overseeded 120 acres and has around 50 acres left to seed of what he calls “total grass kill.”

While last year’s infestation may have been unusual, Hueppelsheuser says it can happen again. Where and when is tough to predict, however. She says the best growers can do is check with local farming associations and keep an eye on their fields.

“There’s nothing you can do to prevent [an outbreak]. If the conditions are good for growing grass, they’re going to be really good for armyworm,” she says. “The females look for lush, green growth in order to lay eggs and if the conditions are good, they’ll lay more eggs and the larvae will grow faster.”

If armyworm does reappear this summer in large numbers, Hueppelsheuser says there are ways to mitigate the damage. Quickly cutting the grass or grazing animals in fields will help because armyworm prefers fresh, uncut grass. Natural predators of armyworm are parasitic wasps, parasitic flies and predatory beetles as well as birds. Pesticides also work.

Hueppelsheuser’s team has joined with researchers in California, Oregon, Washington and Eastern North America in an attempt find out exactly where in the US they come from and what wind currents they use to travel around Western North America.

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