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Originally published:

APRIL 2022
Vol. 108 Issue 4

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Stories In This Edition

Taking root

No room

Farmland values soar

Orchardist grows international, domestic sales

Editorial: The choices we make

Back 40: Freedom has its boundaries in a civilized world

Viewpoint: Underinsured in a potential disaster zone

BCFGA sheds responsibilities, looks ahead

Province hikes minimum wage, piece rates

Climate Action Initiative disbanded by province

Dusty brown

Letters: Minister is misleading

Chicken growers on watch for avian influenza

Ag Briefs: OrganicBC pursues structural review

Ag Briefs: Online bull sale exceeds expectations

Ag Briefs: Groundwater deadline passes

Turkeys emerge from 2021 in a strong position

Sidebar: Benoit trades turkeys for flowers

Agri-industry project gets green light from ALC

Resilient cherry growers target exports

Labour shortage has abattoirs hogtied

No progress on livestock watering regulations

Soakin’ up the sun

Regenerative agriculture vision outlined

Strong yields and new strategy for cranberries

Tree fruit growers struggle to source plants

Fumigation options

Farm Story: Cull potatoes are about to earn their keep

Pilot program bridges the extension gap

There is a future for BC’s apple industry

A warming world calls for new strategies

Heat dome, cold snaps hit some, miss others

Boiler project cuts costs for Duncan farm

Woodshed Chronicles: A little tough love for Frank and Kenneth

Farm partnership supports local non-profit

BC entrepreneurs meet food waste challenge

It’s time to dust off the barbecue

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7 days 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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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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Chicken growers on watch for avian influenza

Disease pressure, low prices follow disastrous 2021 season

April 1, 2022 byPeter Mitham

ABBOTSFORD – With pandemic restrictions lifting and demand for chicken stabilizing, BC poultry producers are renewing their focus on biosecurity to stave off some well-known infectious diseases affecting their birds.

“Biosecurity continues to be a challenge for us,” BC Chicken Growers Association president Dale Krahn told growers at their annual general meeting in Abbotsford, March 1. Disease caps the now-familiar litany of afflictions the industry faced in 2021, including heat domes, forest fires, flooding, atmospheric rivers that strained supply chains, increasing costs and endangering human and animal safety.

The risks have quite literally gone viral as 2022 dawns, with highly pathogenic avian influenza and infectious laryngotracheitis (ILT) threatening flocks.

“The world is fighting with avian influenza,” says Krahn, noting that Europe, Asia, Africa and the US have all seen significant outbreaks, in some cases with heavy losses.

Atlantic Canada has reported an outbreak, and the virus was also identified in an eagle in Delta.

“Growers are reminded to continue their heightened biosecurity as we see health challenges approach BC,” says Krahn. “So far the BC poultry industry has had success staving this off by following our stringent biosecurity measures, which are continually updated by the BC poultry biosecurity committee.”

BC’s last significant high-path AI outbreak was in the winter of 2014-2015.

Krahn notes that strong biosecurity measures are important against a host of threats, including ILT.

“We know that the most likely route by which [the ILT] virus moves is on the wind from contaminated manure, or infected flocks being moved,” he says. “As a poultry industry, we need to work together to mitigate this disease.”

Rising costs

Growers continue to struggle with high costs that have eliminated margins and pushed many into loss positions. Despite two previous rejections for the A-173 and A-174 production periods, BCCGA is claiming exceptional circumstances for the A-175 production period in the hope of winning a price for growers that reflects production costs.

“Growers must have their costs addressed in any pricing solution for our industry to have any chance of sustainability,” says Krahn. “These cost increases, including feed, chicks, sawdust and energy costs – as the membership well knows – are far beyond what our growers can sustain, and for which the current BC pricing formula cannot account. These extraordinarily high costs are expected to continue for some time.”

Yet neither the BC Chicken Marketing Board nor BC Farm Industry Review Board have accepted the requests for adjustments to pricing, although BC Chicken has acknowledged the issue.

BC Chicken chair Harvey Sasaki told growers that wheat futures were $65 a ton higher than corn in June 2021, but the differential had increased to $177 a ton by December. Grower prices are based off corn, the dominant feed grain in Ontario, whereas BC growers use wheat. The huge differential is a huge pain for growers, on top of inflation-adjusted prices that are half what they were in the 1970s.

“Dale described it best in his presentation,” notes Sasaki. “That’s a pretty tough bill to be able to accommodate in the light of all these other challenges.”

BC FIRB took a hands-off approach at the meeting, saying industry must settle the pricing question itself.

“BC FIRB is looking to the chicken board, and the broiler hatching egg commission, as the first-instance regulators in the broiler chicken industry,” FIRB executive director Kirsten Pedersen told growers in response to questions.

Krahn was clear that the situation was dire before 2021, and is now unsustainable.

“We have said it consistently since 2016, and we continue to remind our governing bodies that chicken growers’ returns are not sufficient to meet their ever-increasing costs as they farm chicken,” he says. “We are farming our depreciation, and it is unsustainable.”

But there was some good news for growers on the financial front. BC Chicken returned $943,000 in surplus levies from 2019 to growers, and more could be forthcoming if challenges this year don’t intervene.

Chicken Farmers of Canada first vice-chair Nick de Graaf, a Nova Scotia producer, also urged growers to register for federal support through the Poultry and Egg On-Farm Investment Program, which compensates growers for market access concessions made under the CP-TPP and CETA trade deals with Pacific Rim and EU trading partners. BC growers have access to $48 million under the program.

“We don’t have to ask for the actual funds right away but we must all register. The challenge is that some farmers still haven’t,” he says. “I understand that not all of us will need or want the funds until later, maybe several years later, but we must ask you to register now.”

Registration will show appreciation for and demonstrate the importance of government support for the sector.

 

 

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