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Originally published:

February 2018
Vol. 104 Issue 2

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Stories In This Edition

Province launches ALR review

You lookin’ at me

Ambrosia royalties disputed

BC municipalities tackle farmland housing

Editorial: Love and money

Back 40: It’s time for farmers to speak up

Op-Ed: More workers needed to meet local demand

Ag waste regulation needs united front

Milk production catching up to demand

FIRB appointment comes ahead of busy year

Cottage dairy diversifies with milk dispensing system

Wildfire recovery underpins growing range of programs

Cowichan goats inspire global ambitions

Worker housing issue hinges on collaboration

Growers should file early, file complete

Disaster assistance

BCAC public trust manager steps down

Sidebar: Are you smarter than a 10th grader

Koski steps in at Investment Ag

Farmers keen to make land connections

Courtenay co-op seeks community investment

Backers flock to support sheep farm

Okanagan Spirits focuses on innovation

Research supports year-round starling traps

Feedback sought on water regs

New food guide demands changes in marketing meat

Cattle production expected to rise in 2018

Cattle production expected to rise in 2018

Affordable workshops for new farmers

Dreams become udder reality

Sheep federation charting new future

Growers watching stink bug’s spread

Research: How beavers will help improve cow digestion

Fly larvae offer sustainable alternative protein

Fish help balance greenhouse growing system

Island home to Canada’s top Highland breeder

Where good food comes from

Wannabe: Waste not, want not

Woodshed: When there is good-bad, and bad-bad

Jude’s Kitchen: Red & chocolatey

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6 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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Cowichan goats inspire global ambitions

February 1, 2018 byAllison Finnamore

Vancouver Island start-up aims to revolutionize mastitis diagnosis

DUNCAN – British Columbia goat farmer and cheesemaker Cory Spencer, his tech-savvy neighbour Damir Wallener and agricultural communications specialist Tamara Leigh have teamed up, formed a company and spent the latter part of 2017 participating in an international business accelerator program in New York City.

The concrete jungle of one of the world’s largest cities is a long way from the pristine vales of Cowichan Valley but the work of Spencer, Wallener and Leigh over the last several months resulted in bringing EIO Diagnostics’ udder health detection system to commercialization. Their product, a diagnostic scanner – either handheld for smaller dairies or mounted for farms with more cows – checks udder health and relays images to a screen where infections can be identified. EIO Diagnostics says its multispectral imaging detects udder health sooner and cheaper than other similar products. The diagnostic system is currently undergoing testing in several commercial cow and goat dairies on Vancouver Island.

The idea for the detection system came about like many agricultural-related inventions. Spencer, who operates The Happy Goat Cheese Company with his wife Kirsten Thorarinson, worked in technology and software development prior to farming. He had a problem with his 100-head goat herd and needed a cost-effective solution – so he created one.

“I had a goat with a particularly aggressive form of mastitis where, by the time I had caught it myself … and treated it, the udder was effectively dead,” he says. “It got me thinking, how can I apply my software background into something I could use myself on the farm. How can we develop a solution that’s much less expensive than what’s commercially available and that I can use?”

He explains that the diagnostics detect the thermal signature of the infection in the udder using computer algorithms which identify the mastitis patterns.

Idea with traction

The idea for commercialization gained traction when Spencer mentioned the idea to Wallener, who lives nearby. Wallener has managed multiple start-up cycles and positive business exits, has experience in product development and has an extensive hardware/software patent history. He says he immediately saw the commercialization potential of the diagnostic scanner and that belief has solidified over the past several months as part of the team to set up EIO Diagnostics.

“When we tell the story to the people that this is going to matter the most to, they get it and they want to get involved,” Wallener says. “From the very first farmer we spoke to, their eyes lit up and they said ‘yes!’ ”

It was Wallener as CEO of the company who led the charge in the business accelerator program in New York, Food-X. The investment company partners with early stage companies across the food supply chain and fast-tracks their growth with access to start-up capital, mentorship, networking, learning and an alumni network.

For EIO Diagnostics, Wallener says Food-X’s immersion into a learning atmosphere with fellow entrepreneurs, innovative thinkers and experienced business people as mentors was exciting and motivating. It also helped keep the company on track towards its initial goals.

“When we started at Food-X, we were literally weeks old. Food-X forced me to think through really carefully on how to get from being a very young company to being a focused company,” Wallener explains, pointing out that with so many possible applications for the diagnostic equipment, the experienced Food-X mentors reminded him to be disciplined at this early stage – polish the current product before expanding. The company did, however, decide to grow the current application beyond goats to include dairy cows and sheep.

Future potential

Looking ahead, Wallener sees growth and expansion for EIO Diagnostics. He says with half a billion dairy animals around the globe, “we want to be the diagnostic tool for each and every one of them.”

EIO Diagnostics is starting with Mexico and is already working to get the diagnostic equipment set up in the barns of some of the country’s largest dairies. The company is also drawn to sub-Saharan Africa, where the United Nations expects a population explosion as the world grows to nine billion people by 2050. Wallener points out that farmers in the region face some of the toughest production challenges in the world. Spencer agrees and says EIO Diagnostics may be able to help.

“There’s a lot potential to help out developing countries that don’t have either the knowledge or the community to detect mastitis or treat mastitis,” Spencer says. The scale of farming is vastly different from developed countries, and therefore the loss of a milk-producing animal has far greater impact.

“The dairies over there are not at the production levels they are here,” he says. “If you lose one animal, you lose production capacity. Here, it’s one out of 100 animals but there, it’s one out of six. That’s a big hit in the income of that particular farmer.”

Those big ideas are exactly what draws SOSV LLC to companies like EIO Diagnostics.

Shawn Broderick, a general partner with SOSV, says the company has US$300 million in assets under management and a staff of 80 who operate accelerators in the areas of hardware, software, biology, food, robotics, medical devices, transportation, green energy and more. Broderick was present during EIO Diagnostic’s three months in New York, working to help bring its idea to reality – and beyond.

“As venture-scale investors, we want to invest in people with big ideas,” Broderick says, looking at the UN’s forecasted population growth.

“How are we going to feed those people? We’re either going to have a radically enhanced food system or we’re going to have a mass starvation and hopefully, we’re not going to the latter. Things like EIO, where they can keep cows healthy, means they get better output,” Broderick states, and increased output means feeding more people.

The distance between the Cowichan Valley, midtown Manhattan and sub-Saharan Africa is vast, but EIO Diagnostics is working to draw the geographic points closer through sound business knowledge and a practical farming diagnostic application.

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