Farm Credit Canada’s Women Entrepreneur Program has delivered nearly twice as much support to female agri-food entrepreneurs than expected. During a virtual roundtable to address the challenges women agri-food entrepreneurs face, Marie-Claude Bibeau, in her capacity as the first-ever female minister of agriculture and agri-food, announced that 1,391 women across the country had received more …
COUNTRY WAYS
PAS goes online
BC’s biggest agriculture show is going online in 2021. Scheduled to take place January 28-30 at Tradex in Abbotsford, the Pacific Agriculture Show will adopt a virtual format in 2021 with plans for the 2022 event to return to Tradex, says show manager Jim Shepard. “We’ll be pivoting and producing a world-class virtual show,” he …
Pandemic-related stress increases
AgSafe BC safety advisor Emily Kerr was a featured presenter at Virtual Grower Day, organized by Greenhouse Canada on August 12. The live annual professional development and networking event had been scheduled to take place in Abbotsford, its first time in BC, but it was moved online in response to COVID-19. With five months of …
Farm safety organization revamps
A new era for farm safety in BC dawned this week as farm sector representatives approved motions to rename the province’s largest farm safety organization the AgSafe Agriculture Association and reconfigure its board of directors. “Today marks the first time that AgSafe has made significant changes to the bylaws,” AgSafe chair Don Dahr told a …
Food priorities need to focus on the basics
People working on sustainability have been talking for years about a tipping point. This may well be the year we’ve reached it. A mortal threat to human health – COVID-19 – has disrupted the global status quo and will condition everything we do from now on, at least until we have an effective treatment or …
BC organic growers flourish
BC is the leader in Western Canada when it comes to organic fruit and vegetable production, with more than 3,974 acres (not including potatoes), according to Statistics Canada. This is approximately 9.3% of the national total of 42,430 acres. Revenues from organically grown fruits and vegetables (excluding potatoes) from BC farms totalled $39.8 million last …