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Originally published:

JUNE 2021
Vol. 107 Issue 6

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Stories In This Edition

Growers hopeful as BC opens

Tender touch

Japanese bettle control pays off

Nursery sales rise as consumers stick close to home

Editorial: Prospering together

Back 40: A mammoth solution to climate change

Viewpoint: Teamwork essential to grow in the new normal

Wind machines in Surrey face blowback

Sidebar: Dispute resolution

BC Veg unveils strategic priorities as it looks ahead

Quick turnaround

Ag Brief: South Asia flight ban strands BC farm workers

Ag Brief: Oliver vintner dies

Ag Brief: Province delivers AITC funding

Letter: Well “registration” misleading

Province’s chicken growers see rebound

Pricing formula on horizon for poultry sector

Snooze and lose

Grain costs put pressure on livestock producers

PST applicable to horse hay sales

BC raspberry growers face global issues

Little cherry disease a big threat to fruit growers

Core knowledge lands Kelowna grower top award

Strategy needed for Crown forage resources

BC abattoir volume up 30% in 2020

Ranchers urged to plan ahead for a changing climate

Cidery ups game with orchard purchase

The milkman makes a comeback on Island

Short season doesn’t stall northern berries

Cariboo-Chilcotin sheep group formed

Viewpoint: Farm insurance crisis threatens landowners

Mushroom harvester enters final testing

Sidebar: BC mushrooms at a glance

Mushrooms add value to cut blocks

Farm Story: Diversity and inclusion extends to tractors

Equipment intentions fall

Hops and CBC-centric hemp come together

Research: Processed foods are convenient but at what cost?

Soil science key for Kootenay farm project

Research sheds light on late blight strains

Woodshed: Deborah keeps divorce news between friends

OK apples at core of social entrepreneurship

Jude’s Kitchen: To the sea in summer

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10 hours 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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5 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

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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Mushrooms add value to cut blocks

Slash offers growing opportunities in the Kootenays

Robin Mercy of Mr. Mercy’s Mushrooms inoculates a stump with Phoenix oyster mushrooms on Kaslo’s Wardner Trail. Brian Lawrence

June 1, 2021 byBrian Lawrence

KASLO – They may not be ready to harvest until 2022 but mushrooms may soon catch the eye of hikers along Kaslo’s Wardner Trail.

A project to combine forestry and food production championed by Robin Mercy, owner of Mr. Mercy’s Mushrooms, saw the Village of Kaslo grant permission for Mercy to inoculate stumps and logs with Phoenix oyster mushrooms.

“I thought, let’s just do some research here, and see if it can grow in an unaided way,” says Mercy.

He usually grows mushrooms on hardwood, but this variety grows well on Douglas fir, which was among species recently cut by the Kaslo and District Community Forest Society on village land as part of wildfire mitigation efforts and to fight fir beetle.

In early May, Mercy and his employee drilled holes in the fallen wood and injected fungi, sealing the holes with beeswax. The waiting game is now on, as Mercy will eventually determine if the fungi fruits and, if it does, how well it fruits.

If the low-tech methods are effective, the potential to team up the forestry and agriculture industries is vast, particularly if forestry waste, such as logs and stumps, can be utilized.

“It’s trying to work more with what we have here,” says Mercy.

Not a new concept

The concept of growing food in the wild isn’t new to BC, according to a recent study by Simon Fraser University historical ecologists, which examined the diversity of ancient Indigenous forest gardens developed by the Ts’msyen and Coast Salish. Still growing today at archaeological sites, the gardens include fruit and nut trees, root foods and medicinal plants, among others.

Whatever the outcome in the forest, mycology is now a way of life for Mercy, who was raised in Argenta, at Kootenay Lake’s north end, and whose formal education is in music composition.

“‘Farmer’ was never a career path,” says Mercy. “I feel I come from a very homesteading background. … We always ate mostly from own garden. I experienced producing my own food, and never considered it on a commercial scale.”

The 33-year-old didn’t forage for mushrooms when he was young, but in his 20s as a tree planter and crew boss, he began carrying guidebooks to help him identify plants and mushrooms.

“I always got really excited whenever I would find wild mushrooms,” says Mercy. “They’re so mysterious. The same patch of ground looks totally bare 90% of the time –when the right conditions occur, you have mushrooms popping up. You have no idea what’s here unless you’re intensely studying that patch of land.”

During a break from work, Mercy took a cultivation course in Eugene, Oregon, which led to a month-long internship in 2016 at What the Fungus, a gourmet mushroom grower in Summerland. There, he learned about the specialty mushroom business from growing to marketing.

With his first son on the way in 2017, Mercy wanted steady home-based work. He launched the business, which grew to become his full-time job two years ago. He now harvests about 30 pounds of organic mushrooms daily from fruiting chambers on his two-acre property, which also houses a 500-square-foot laboratory – fitting for a self-proclaimed “lifelong nerd.”

“It’s the nerdiest form of farming you can imagine,” says Mercy. “I’m using a scalpel and working in a clean room, and putting cuttings onto Petri dishes. It’s precision work in a lot of ways, and that really appeals to me.”

So does the region’s foodie culture, which guarantees home cooks and restaurateurs will be more interested in specialty mushrooms than the typical white button, crimini and portobello mushrooms Mercy offers. The less common oyster, shitake and lion’s mane mushrooms have remained unchanged through millennia of agriculture.

“Humans haven’t been changing these species from what they are in nature at all,” he says.

The low-tech method he’s experimenting with in the forest will help bring production a bit closer to nature, avoiding the pasteurized sawdust and single-use plastics his regular operation uses.

“They grow on stumps and logs and trees in natural habitat,” he says. “We can start on a small scale, and move toward that as a production model.”

He hopes they’ll inspire mushroom lovers at the same time.

“Mushrooms really capture people’s imagination,” he says. “It kind of brings the idea of using mushrooms in this way to the forefront of people’s imaginations.”

 

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