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Originally published:

November 2017
Vol. 103 Issue 11

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Stories In This Edition

Horse Power

Buy BC rollout in works

Hullcar report delayed

Breaking new ground

Perfecting the straight and narrow

Editorial: A new deal

The good, the bad, the disturbing: climate change Blueberry growers must rise above the competition

Vitala Foods cracks open free range egg market

Regulating the range

Winner! Winner

Sentence loosened for dairy worker

Farmers must take lead in building public trust

Food system confidence growing but costs still bite

Foodlands Trust initiative moves forward

Cost of record wildfires continues to rise

New range, new challenge

Peace grain yeilds good but drying needed

New hire for research

BC Tree Fruits singled out for excellence

Land commision to allow breweries on farmland

Greens seek limits on foreign ownership

Salmon farms work towards sustainability

Fruit growers stepping up replant lobby

Arctic apples make official debut

3 million pounds!

Cannabis hopes more than a pipe dream

More government regulation needed

Hop farm burns but demand fuels hope

Predators, politicians worry sheep producers

Mother Nature to blame for late cranberries

Hard work pays off for family business

Research breeds better bees for Vancouver Island

Persistence is the key to success: innovation

What investors want

Penicillium is an insidious Blue Meany for fruit growers

Collaboration key to extension programming

BC sheep breeders honoured with GenOvis awards

Good breeding, feeding are keys to strong replacement ewes

Next Generation

Strong appetite for female purebreds at fall sales

Range management strategies highlight symposium

Dairy sale average one of the best

Keremeos fair has ambitious plans for future

Leiutenant Governor honoured by 4-H BC

Wannabe

Woodshed: Henderson loses ground

Delicious diet foods

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4 days 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

1 month 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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2 months ago

The scale of this year's avian flu outbreak now rivals the massive outbreak of 2004. An additional 13 commercial farms in the Fraser Valley have tested positive in the last week. To date, 49 commercial farms and 1.2 million birds have been impacted. CFIA is struggling to keep up with depopulation of sick birds. ... See MoreSee Less

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AI outbreak rivals 2004

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The scale of this year’s outbreak of highly pathogenic avian influenza now rivals the massive outbreak of 2004 that saw farms throughout the Fraser Valley depopulated. An additional 13 commercial…
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Commercial operations need to reevaluate their stocking densities and overall health and welfare of the animals within their systems if they are ever going to have a fighting chance against this virus.

Yup cause food shortage

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Foodlands Trust initiative moves forward

November 1, 2017 byTamara Leigh

KELOWNA – FarmFolk/ CityFolk’s Foodlands Trust project has taken another significant step forward with the formal registration and approval of the Foodlands Co-operative of BC.

“We have registered the trust as a co-operative,” says Heather Pritchard, who has led the initiative since its inception. “That means we have a legal structure and the co-op is going to work towards becoming a charitable organization. Getting charitable status will make us a stand-alone organization able to bring land into trust and provide charitable tax receipts.”

The Foodlands Cooperative is the culmination of the experience gathered by Heather Pritchard from FarmFolk CityFolk and Hanna Whitman from UBC Centre for Sustainable Farming over a decade of working with community farms.

“In our experience and research, we found the biggest barriers to new farmers is not so much that there wasn’t the land but that they didn’t have security on it,” says Pritchard.

“It’s very difficult, if land is privately owned, for people to have long-term tenure and access on one hand. On the other hand, there is a whole generation of older farmers who may not want to leave their farms and who may not be in a position to have to sell their land but where, if we had a mechanism to put it in the land trust, we could then make it available to new people getting into farming.”

That vision drove the development of the Foodlands Trust, first as an initiative of FarmFolk CityFolk, and now as a co-op. The trust’s founding members — FarmFolk CityFolk Society, Vancity Community Foundation, Fraser Common Farm Co-operative and the BC Association of Farmers’ Markets — will form the first board of directors in partnership with several advisory members.

The new structure doesn’t change the trust’s objectives: working to secure, protect and steward land for the promotion of sustainable agriculture and local food production while recognizing, respecting and including Indigenous food systems.

However, the new structure allows the organization to hold lands in trust, with the vision of having locally based organizations or co-operatives manage production on the land itself. A pilot of the model ran successfully at Lohbrunner Community Farm Co-operative in Saanich earlier this year.

Ceres Circle Farm, a 36.8-acre sheep farm in Kelowna, donated by Sue Haley, will be the new organization’s first property. The transfer is still in negotiation but when it is complete, the Foodlands Cooperative will hold the land and a local community group in Kelowna will manage it.

“Preserving farmland is very important and I don’t feel the ALR has been sufficient to do that. A lot of land has been removed from the reserve, particularly in Central Okanagan. There’s also quite a lot of land in the reserve in this area that is not being farmed,” says Sue Haley, who raised sheep organically on Ceres Circle Farm until last spring. “I wanted to try and make it possible for people to keep farming on this piece of land that I’ve had in my possession for a long time.”

Foodlands Co-operative is actively looking for an experienced sheep farmer to be the anchor farm business on Ceres, and for other farmers to share to land. There is room for other animals, a small orchard, a market garden and a natural area full of wild food and medicine. The farm also includes a provincially licensed abattoir and a three-bedroom house.

“Basically, I think this is an important gap that the Foodlands Co-operative is trying to fill,” says Haley. “The idea of co-operative farms is something that I would like to see encouraged, although it’s quite a different way of doing things from traditional farming. But we need some new ways of doing things because obviously the old ways are breaking down.”

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