Are patients running out of local food at BC hospitals? The BC Ministry of Agriculture announced $350,000 this month to help the Interior Health Authority buy more BC-grown food for patients. The official government announcement says the funding will support “a project facilitator, patient information, procurement specialist services and a food-processing specialist” to help BC …
NEWS
Outstanding recognition
Cobble Hill egg and vegetable producers James and Cammy Lockwood of Lockwood Farms are BC & Yukon’s Outstanding Young Farmers for 2019. The couple received the award in Abbotsford, March 12, beating out chicken and hop growers Ray and Tracey Bredenhof of Abbotsford’s Bredenhof Farms in a very close competition between two excellent, innovative and …
Budget targets market development
This week’s federal budget put the emphasis squarely on finding markets at home and abroad for top-quality agricultural products. The budget allocates $134.4 million over five years in support of a Food Policy for Canada to address food-related issues. The policy aims to position Canada as a trusted source of healthy food. It will help producers stay in business by …
Slaughter capacity squeezed
Spring has hardly sprung but fall is fast approaching for livestock producers. An announcement last week from Johnston’s Custom Cutting in Chilliwack urged producers who hadn’t already done so to book slaughter dates with the facility. “The slots are already getting limited from July to December 2019,” a memo to producers said, noting that dates …
BC producers hit hard by 2018 wildfires eligible for AgriStability relief
A potent mix of flooding, drought and wildfire in 2018 have prompted the federal and provincial governments to trigger the late participation mechanism of the AgriStability program. Canada’s new agriculture minister Marie-Claude Bibeau made the announcement in Coldstream on Monday as part of her first visit to BC as agriculture minister. “The late participation mechanism …
BC markets question “local” definition
Defining “local” food is a big issue for farmers’ markets in eastern BC, which raised their concerns at the BC Association of Farmers’ Markets annual conference in Kimberley March 8-10. The association has lost at least one market over the issue, and Dawn Deydey, cofounder of the Mountain Market in Fernie, doesn’t want to see …