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Originally published:

February 2019
Vol. 105 Issue 2

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Stories In This Edition

Joy Ride!

Critics urge licence delay

ALR committee files report

Cannabis drives drop in Delta farm assessments

Editorial: Party and province

Back Forty: You can’t get apps on that

Viewpoint: Annual assessments a chance to take stock

Staff reorganization targets leaner fruit co-op

Preliminary hearing in high-profile poultry abuse

Growers pin hopes on Columbia River update

Survey keeps national park reserve in spotlight

Political engagement headlines dairy meeting

World milk prices take blame for shifting returns

Patience is a virtue

Ag Briefs: Sasaki appointed new head of chicken board

Ag Briefs: Ottawa invests in dairy sector

AB: Piece rates, taxes increase

AB: AITC focuses on growth

Capital Region considers compensation cuts

Letters: Protect farmland from cannabis production

Letters: Dog owners need to accept responsibility

Letters: The beef about climate change

Cadillac’ of aviaries will reduce labour costs

Berry growers face new import requirements

Open house reveals secrets of diagnostics lab

Cannabis propagation industry sprouting in BC

Sidebar: Deep roots

FCC targets women with new business program

Agreement sets stage for fish farm phase-out

Grazing, forage and water top list at town hall

Ranchers reassured regarding bovine TB cases

Digging into soil nutrition at education day

Microgreen grower attracts far-flung following

Science of cannabis takes centre stage

Blueberry growers hone use of box liners

Ostrich industry takes flight with big plans

Tunnels boost fruit quality, add to berry season

Big bucks being spent to protect bee health

Sidebar: Province boosts funding

Mystery bee disease studied

Direct-marketing opportunities have potential

Research: Preventing soft scald in apples

Regional food system is the new focus of group’s efforts

Wannabe: Growers deserve our love

Woodshed: A performance Kenneth can’t afford to miss

Jude’s Kitchen: Happy new year, my sweet Valentine

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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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Growers pin hopes on Columbia River update

Compensation for greater US competition a key issue for fruit and vegetable growers

January 29, 2019 byTom Walker

KELOWNA – Negotiations to update the 55-year-old Columbia River Treaty between Canada and the US are ramping up.

Ratified in 1964, the treaty’s main purpose was to optimize power generation and flood control for both Canada and the US. Three dams were constructed in Canada: Duncan in 1967, Arrow/Hugh Keenleyside in 1968 and Mica in 1973. Canadian land was set aside for a reservoir when the US built Libby dam in Montana in 1972. Canada manages 15.5-million-acre feet of water a year to help both Canadian and US utilities gain optimum power generation and lessen the potential for floods.

“Power and flood control were the only items of importance in the day,” Kathy Eichenberger, executive director of the BC Columbia River Treaty Review, told a recent meeting of the Okanagan Basin Water Board.

The treaty benefits the US by managing river flows, which helps control flooding, manage power generation potential, maintain navigation conditions, enhance fisheries and provides late season irrigation and recreation opportunities.

BC receives an entitlement to sell power on the open market, worth $180 million last year, as well as increased power generation capacity. The Revelstoke dam, for instance, could not have been built if the Mica dam hadn’t been built first.

But BC lost a lot – more than 600 square kilometres of fertile bottom land was flooded, 2,300 people were relocated, entire communities were displaced, and First Nations cultural sites were lost. Fluctuating water levels have a significant impact on communities alongside the reservoirs the dams created. Nakusp residents, for example, have to deal with a 20-metre change in lake levels that make it tough to establish docking facilities.

Moreover, BC citizens were not consulted in the initial treaty process.

Review

That changed in 2014, when the BC government made the decision to continue the treaty and seek improvements within the existing framework. A review over the last three years included community meetings in Nelson, Castlegar, Trail, Cranbrook, Jaffray, Invermere, Golden, Revelstoke Nakusp and Fauquier. There is on-going consultation with the three First Nations in the region and Eichenberger says they’ll return to the other 10 communities that hosted meetings.

She says the top two negotiation issues for BC are “clear gains over the status quo regarding economic, social, environmental and Indigenous interests and economic return of [an] equitable share of all US benefits.”

“The true value of the treaty to the US is much more than power and flood control,” she says. “That needs to be recognized by the US.”

BC fruit, potato and onion growers face stiff competition from US producers who are able to pump water out of Lake Roosevelt and irrigate land that only receives five to eight inches of rain a year.

“That irrigation water allowed growers to switch from dry land farming of oats, barley and sugar beets to fruit trees, asparagus and onions,” noted Adrian Arts, a young orchardist from Summerland. “I’ve been on a 1,000-acre orchard down there. You can see these huge swathes of green in between the dry sagebrush.”

The key to this orchard success is flow timing.

While the Grand Coulee dam was constructed before the Columbia River treaty, Canadian water management ensures late summer and early fall flows provide enough water to finish the irrigation season and prepare the thousands of acres of fruit trees in the area for the winter.

As well, flow management provides water for spawning fish.

The true value of this water is hard to measure, however. Calculating that benefit, and the potential for increased economic benefit going forward, will be challenging.

Methodology

BC Fruit Growers Association general manager Glen Lucas has been gathering background on the economic benefits of shaping the water flow.

“That has not been a hard sell because the US has done an irrigation study and they know,” says Lucas. “But we need to come up with a methodology to determine how that shaping of the water flow benefits agriculture.”

“We know that conversation is coming,” says Eichenberger. “We are far apart, but collaboration seems to be the tone.”

There have been four negotiation sessions to date. A fifth is scheduled for late February.

There is some urgency on the US side. The agreement to manage flows for flood control expires in 2024. After that, Canada no longer has to provide assured storage and the US must use their own storage capacity first before Canada can be “called upon” (as the treaty describes it). That means the current flow patterns for power, fish, recreation and agriculture could be completely disrupted.

“The US Army Corps of Engineers is very concerned about this,” says Eichenberger, noting that the window doesn’t leave enough time to build more flood control capacity. “If we don’t agree on something, they are going to be in a very difficult situation.”

Washington famers might add to that urgency. Some very productive farmland sits outside the Columbia Basin. Up until now, they have relied on deep wells, and those wells are running dry. They are licking their lips as they look towards Lake Roosevelt.

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