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Originally published:

June 2018
Vol. 104 Issue 6

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Stories In This Edition

A Taste of Spring

Flooding wallops southern interior

Ottawa wires CAP cash

Minimum wage hike squeezes farm margins

Editorial: The new democracy

Back Forty: Horgan on receiving end of pipeline challenge

Viewpoint: BC has led country in national check-off support

New chair appointed to land commission

Richmond expands farmhouse provisions

Demand for land drives farmland values higher

Biosolids raise a stink with neighbours

Rising wine sales boost demand for red grapes

Game-changer on dividend splitting

Mushroom merger

Wildfire, flood review has First Nations focus

Sidebar: Snapshot of recommendations

Labour tops issues as hothouse growers meet

Growers on look-out for activists

Antimicrobial lockdown

Ag briefs: Island farmers on lookout for armyworm

Ag briefs: AgSafe elects new chair

Ag briefs: No flood of licences

Ag briefs: Direct delivery

Hops revival gains traction with feds

Wildfire top concern of grape growers

Sidebar: Preparing for fires in the Okanagan

Nuffield scholars

Two studies promise to ensure slaughter capacity

Sidebar: Consultation schedule

Oversight sought

Bumper crop of invasive weeds after wildfires

Elk sights have producers concerned

Guichon heads back to life on the ranch

Research: Grazing cattle the sustainable way

Farmers markets focus on cultivating trust

Veggie days open house

Co-ops offer values-based alternatives

Region focuses on boosting local food usage

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Growing opportunity

Garden City project breaks sustainable ground

Weevils pose challenges

Protecting pollinators key for crop yields

Wannabe: Keeping up with the times

Young farmers turn on, tune in and download

Woodshed: Kenneth has another go at the Massey

4-H BC thanks partners for their support

Jude’s Kitchen: Co-op food

 

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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

buff.ly

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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New chair appointed to land commission

While he’s disappointed, Frank Leonard isn’t surprised his term wasn’t renewed

June 1, 2018 byPeter Mitham [photo By Chad Hipolito]

VICTORIA – The outgoing chair of the Agricultural Land Commission believes it’s in good hands as the province prepares to receive recommendations for its revitalization.

The province appointed Frank Leonard chair of the commission in 2015 following the abrupt termination of Richard Bullock. Leonard’s completed his three-year term and his appointment was not renewed.

“I enjoyed it. I’m grateful to have served in that role, and I’m certainly going to miss it,” Leonard told Country Life in BC. “I think I’m the only one who kept telling people I was not likely to be reappointed. … It wasn’t so much the job I was doing, it’s just the flavour I’ve had in my past life around politics. So I get it, I was prepared for it, though I’m disappointed to leave.”

Leonard served as mayor of Saanich from 1996 to 2014, and previously worked in his family’s tire business. His career led to several involvements with municipal government organizations.

Leonard has now been replaced by Jennifer Dyson, a Vancouver Island water buffalo farmer who was most recently chair of the nine-member panel charged with gathering public feedback and reviewing options for revitalizing the Agricultural Land Reserve.

Dyson’s appointment sends a clear signal that the province is keen to implement recommendations of the panel, which will draft its report under the leadership of vice-chair Vicki Huntington.

Leonard believes he’s leaving the commission in good hands. Key staff, including CEO Kim Grout, remain in place and the commission continues to enjoy the larger budget granted it under former agriculture minister Norm Letnick.

“The biggest difference I made was in changing the management and in managing the change. I’ve had people, even on social media, comment that they thought that the land use decisions I made were appropriate and consistent with the legislation,” he said, acknowledging that social media can make reputations as well as break them. “People didn’t see a difference in the land use decisions. … Applications that were taking more than two years when I arrived [were] being done in 90 working days when I left. People were still getting ‘yes’ or ‘no’ as appropriate [but] they were getting the answer a lot sooner.”

When he was appointed, Leonard said the best way to protect the ALR was to ensure that the farms within it were financially viable. This is in sync with the arguments BC agriculture minister Lana Popham has put forward, and the thrust of several comments made during both formal and informal discussions regarding the future of the ALR during the recent consultation, which ended April 30.

However, Leonard worries at the exact shape revitalization may take, given the political differences between the current government and that of the BC Liberals.

“There’s some nostalgia for the ALR prior to the Liberals bringing in legislation that changed it,” he says “I’m hoping ‘revitalization’ isn’t a cover word for ‘back to the future.’”

While the two-zone structure introduced in 2014 has been “less than successful,” Leonard says regional panels that allow landowners to make a case to local commissioners are important.

“I wouldn’t fight very hard to keep the zones but the panels, I think, have been very successful,” he says. “Doing site visits, having face-to-face contact with applicants, have just given us so much more credibility with applicants and with stakeholders, rather than having people meet in Burnaby once a month and make decisions. It’s much more respectful to applicants to have local people on their property listening to them and letting them tell their story.”

Bullock, for his part, continues to advocate for farmland protection. Shortly after his dismissal in May 2015, just seven months before the end of his five-year term, he gave a presentation to the Institute for Sustainable Food Systems at Kwantlen Polytechnic University (KPU) in Richmond that framed his termination as politically motivated.

BC NDP agriculture critic Lana Popham told Country Life in BC at the time she agreed, calling Bullock’s termination, “a completely incompetent decision.”

“He has always championed agriculture, and he knows how important it’s going to be in our future,” she said. “That is not something that this current government wants to hear.”

KPU hopes Popham gives Bullock a more sympathetic hearing. KPU asked him to write the foreword to its recent white paper on farmland protection. The paper aimed to challenge free market ideals in order to ensure farmland is valued for food production, and used for that purpose.

“The ALC is positioned to move to the next stage, one in which the ALR is accepted as simply being a part of who we are,” Bullock wrote in his foreword. “The minister must be bold in her recommendations to move this key legislation forward. At this juncture,

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