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Originally published:

MARCH 2022
Vol. 108 Issue 3

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Stories In This Edition

Lucky chickens

$227m rebuild fund

Glyphosate shortage looms

Province opens ALR to agritech development

Editorial: Divorced from the earth

Back 40: Broken supply chain weakens food system

Viewpoint: BC’s emergency response needs improvement

Building back better means avoiding past mistakes

Sidebar: Grand Forks initiative protects farms

Rural, urban areas prepare for extreme weather

Ag Briefs: Property owner appeals BC SPCA seizure

Ag Briefs: Province sued over mind ban

Farm income projected to reach new heights

Potato growers brace for higher input costs

Keeping cranberries cool a hot topic

Rewarding farmers for enhancing riparian areas

Sidebar: Farmers need not apply

Diversification drives growth of organic farm

Leadership skills can help farmers cope with disaster

Winter rainbow

Compost facilities facing pushback

Cheese leads the way as BC dairies seek capacity

Island yogurt producer boosting production

Grape growers prepare for climate change

The perfect solution for farmers on the go

Small-lot egg producer awarded quota

Sidebar: Future quota draws likely limited

Broiler health in spotlight for small-lot farmers

Pest data helps with management decisions

Research: Researchers discover a world of apple microbiomes

Farms meet the demand for local food

Better berry harvester meets growers’ needs

Farm Story: Spring demands the old heave-ho

Safety in the spotlight as farms recover

Woodshed: Henderson style has chins wagging

Chilliwack teams plow past the century mark

Jude’s Kitchen: Spring has sprung! Time to make bread!

 

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23 hours ago

Fecal coliform levels in the streams and watercourses that flow through Langley has been an issue for decades. The Langley Environmental Partners Society (LEPS) has received $97,000 from the federal government to work with property owners to help them reduce their impact on water quality and the environment, and ensure their properties are in compliance with the Agriculture Environmental Management Code of Practice (AEMCoP). The story is in the February edition of Country Life in BC. Subscribe today bit.ly/3RIKms9/.

#BCAg #aemcop
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Fecal coliform levels in the streams and watercourses that flow through Langley has been an issue for decades. The Langley Environmental Partners Society (LEPS) has received $97,000 from the federal government to work with property owners to help them reduce their impact on water quality and the environment, and ensure their properties are in compliance with the Agriculture Environmental Management Code of Practice (AEMCoP). The story is in the February edition of Country Life in BC. Subscribe today https://bit.ly/3RIKms9/.

#BCAg #AEMCoP
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2 days ago

BC dairy farmers are feeling the pinch and some in the Fraser Valley are considering selling as narrow margins get tighter and high financing costs complicate succession plans. It's our cover story in the February edition of Country Life in BC.

bit.ly/3JGgk6B

#bcagriculture #bcdairy
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BC dairy farmers are feeling the pinch and some in the Fraser Valley are considering selling as narrow margins get tighter and high financing costs complicate succession plans. Its our cover story in the February edition of Country Life in BC.

https://bit.ly/3JGgk6B

#bcagriculture #bcdairy
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So much pressure being put on the dairy industry from the US. It’s hard to keep the lobbying at bay. Canadian dairy should supply Canadian tables and the farmers who provide it should be paid what they are worth. There is no such thing as cheap food

Farm Management is key. It can't all be blamed on the government.

Just been watching NZ TV news and the price of food. Most complaining about the price of dairy products due to the fact that domestic prices are high with most production being exported. No supply management.

I really don't understand the concern here. The article literally says 30-40 of 600 BC dairy farms (that's less than 1%) are experiencing financial pressure, likely due to being somewhat overleveraged. Sounds like just some mismanagement rather than a broad policy failure is the cause here.

Whole Food Plant Based eating ...oat milk coconut milk Almond milk soy milk etc

Noooooooo. That’s exactly what this LIB/NDP party wants. They want everyone to cave in to their knees. Don’t do it. It’ll be the end.

A lot of this is government squeeze. Be hungry and compliant!

The government is the eternal enemy of humanity.

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1 week ago

Farmland Advantage is receiving a $445,000 grant from the federal government. The program, the “brainchild” of Invermere cattle rancher Dave Zehnder, provides compensation to farmers for their conservation efforts to protect BC’s grasslands, riparian areas and wildlife habitat. The funding from Environment and Climate Change Canada under the Species at Risk Partnerships on Agricultural Lands (SARPAL) and Priority Places programs, will be administered by the Investment Agriculture Foundation of BC. Rewarding farmers for enhancing riparian areas appeared in our March 2022 edition and you can view it at ... See MoreSee Less

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Rewarding farmers for enhancing riparian areas

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INVERMERE – Farmers and ranchers in the Columbia Valley will continue to see rewards for taking action to conserve and enhance important riparian areas on their farms. The Windermere District Farmer...
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2 weeks 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

2 months 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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Building back better means avoiding past mistakes

Going with the flow of status quo invites future disaster

The rush to rebuild in areas of the province hammered by rain and floodwaters needs to include strategies that reduce future risk. SUBMITTED

March 1, 2022 byTom Walker

KELOWNA – Planners and decision-makers are in a difficult position as they face the challenge of creating a plan to mitigate damage from last November’s unprecedented rainfall.

On the one hand, property owners want a return to life as it was, minus the water. But at the same time, building back – even if it is better – does not guarantee that future disasters won’t be repeated.

If nothing changes, the same properties face the same potential for damage in the future, warns Tamsin Lyle, principal of Ebbwater Consulting in Vancouver.

Lyle spoke to the Okanagan Basin Water Board’s water stewardship council in February and reminded them that flooding is both natural and necessary.

“Flooding is the reason we have the wonderful farming area of the Lower Mainland,” she says. “But when flooding interacts with things we care about, we have a problem.”

That interaction caused hundreds of millions of dollars in damage in November to more than 1,100 farm properties on Sumas Prairie, in the Nicola Valley and Princeton, according to the province. Yet if planners don’t expand their toolbox of mitigation strategies, we are at risk of the same amount of damage occurring again, says Lyle.

Lyle urges planners to evolve past a singular approach to flood management.

“We need to break out of the serial engineering path,” she quips. “Don’t put so much emphasis on dikes. They do breach and last November showed us how catastrophic a breach can be. There are so many other non-structural things we could be doing.”

Restoring the more than 600 km of dikes across the Lower Mainland shows that government is responsive and is good for people, says Lyle, but it doesn’t address the fundamental risks extreme weather poses.

“We know that climate change will continue to increase the hazards of extreme weather events and we know that expanding development in the Fraser Valley will increase the numbers of people vulnerable to those events,” she says.

The latest flood event caused disruptions similar to those of the 1948 freshet, notes Lyle.

The accepted response after 1948 was to build more dikes to protect the population living on the flood plain, which is now more than 10 times what it was then.

Lyle says planners should consider three non-structural risk reduction strategies under the themes of land stewardship, land-use management and building management.

With land stewardship, planners and government work to maintain and restore natural assets and systems such as watersheds, wetlands and riparian areas.

Land use management involves developing strategies and regulations to reduce exposure. Limiting or selecting development within a flood zone reduces the number of people or businesses that could be impacted.

Sumas Prairie has much to offer as a farming location but building a processing operation such as a packing facility outside the flood zone would eliminate the risk for that business. Provincial animal and plant health labs that were closed due to flood damage also don’t need to be on the floodplain.

Building management involves strategies and regulations that can reduce the sensitivity of structures to flood damage. Building codes can require flood protection, ranging from placing structures above flood levels (Sumas Prairie homes often sit atop a berm) to using flood-resistant materials, or even constructing a permanent water barrier around a building.

Rush to rebuild

In the rush to return to normal, Lyle says planners can overlook other important values. The dikes built following the 1948 flood often failed to consider Indigenous values.

While no one would criticize the rapid rebuilding of critical highway infrastructure following the most recent floods and landslides, she says thousands of tonnes of untreated rock were dumped into important waterways in the process.

But economic forces may mandate change faster than planners, Lyle believes.

She has spoken with pension fund executives who are worried about the losses that they’re taking on real estate investments in the Fraser Valley. Banks are reluctant to lend money right now to Fraser Valley farmers, and insurers are declining coverage.

“Insurers are saying that are no longer interested in insuring as it doesn’t make sense on the financial side,” she says. “These are really powerful tools for change.”

 

 

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