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Originally published:

NOVEMBER 2019
Vol. 105 Issue 11

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Stories In This Edition

ALC gets an earful

Herding Hens

Food hub funding boost

Municipalities challenge ALC over process

No bad apples

Editorial: Taking stock

Back Forty: Remembering Aunt Dolly, and others

Viewpoint: Keeping BC farms (and farmers) growing

Farm status undermined by local bylaws

Big green gourd

Heavy rains don’t wash out potato hopes

Giant hornets headline beekeepers’ concerns

Honey producers honour industry leaders

Country Life in BC wins awards at conference

Bridging the urban-rural divide

New skills needed for technology-driven agriculture

Data drives more efficient poultry farming

Ag Briefs: New CEO appointed at BC Tree Fruits

Ag Briefs: Site launched for farmers’ institutes

Ag Briefs: Child labour feedback sought

Demand underpins cheesemaker’s expansion

Cranberry growers expect lower yields

Neighbours raise stink over cannabis farms

Sheep farmers share their experiences

Lots (and lots) of pumpkins

Federation moves forward on key initiatives

Riparian assessment requirements updated

On-farm slaughter a key skill for producers

On the move

Sidebar: Better than offal

Feedback on new watering regs a concern

Market Musings: The future in beef looks like a slam dunk

Growers all ears at silage corn field day

UBC dairy centre signs five-year lease

Falkland Dairy volume buyer at Holstein Sae

Mega-dairies are the future of US farms

Research: Bacterial leaf streak lacks chemical controls

Big beef show at BC Ag Expo

Farm News: Growing prospects brighten dark autum days

BC Young Farmers look to grow north

Horse Power

Day-long 4-H event puts emphasis on safety

Woodshed: Newt schemes to rescue Kenneth’s tractor

Good gourd! Giant vegetables weigh off

Jude’s Kitchen: Late fall harvest

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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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New skills needed for technology-driven agriculture

RBC says Canada’s agricultural revenues could top $11 billion

November 1, 2019 byDavid Schmidt

ABBOTSFORD – Canadian agriculture has the potential to generate $11 billion in revenue, Royal Bank of Canada senior vice-president John Stackhouse told a select group of industry leaders at an RBC Farmer 4.0 luncheon in Abbotsford, October 10.

“The world will have to produce more food than ever before to feed people in the next 40 years,” he said. “To feed the world more sustainably is a calling for Canada.”

Stackhouse was reporting on RBC’s release of Farmer 4.0, a new report detailing the potential of Canadian agriculture and what it will take to realize it.

It was deliberately titled Farmer 4.0 as RBC believes we are now in the fourth iteration of farming. Farmer 1.0 represented the shift from subsistence agriculture to specialization; Farmer 2.0 occurred with the development of advanced machinery for agriculture and Farmer 3.0 took place as a result of the scientific revolution.

Farmer 4.0 represents a technological and data revolution, with the development of supercomputers as small as an iPhone and such smart machines as robotic milkers, robotic picking machines and autonomous tractors.

Although this will reduce agriculture’s manual labour requirements, Stackhouse insisted agriculture will need more people, not less. It’s just that those people will need different skills, in particular the ability to analyze and manage the massive amount of data being generated.

“We need to change the way we educate people,” Stackhouse said. “The federal government needs to stand up and deliver a national agricultural skills strategy. We need to connect research and development to skills development.”

Stackhouse said Canada lags well behind the Netherlands, Norway, Israel and Australia in using data and technology to increase production. The Netherlands, for example, has three times the agricultural exports Canada does despite having just 3% of the arable land of farmers in Canada.

Providing their insights into how to get agriculture to reach the potential Stackhouse identified were Rickey Yada, dean of the UBC Faculty of Land & Food Systems, Lisa Powell, associate director for research at the University of the Fraser Valley Food & Agriculture Institute and Ian Paton, agriculture co-critic for the BC Liberals.

“The key is to take an interdisciplinary approach,” Powell said. “We need to confront the challenges facing new and young producers, such as land affordability, access to capital and skilled labour.”

Yada said getting new technology into production more quickly is key.

“We need to reinforce nimbleness and change,” he said.

Paton called for more support for “big commercial farms,” saying they have the scale to feed the world. At the same time, he demanded more opportunities for on-farm markets, pumpkin patches, corn mazes and other agritourism initiatives. Despite their small size, he said they are critical to getting people onto farms and “more excited about farming.”

Once they are excited about it, Paton said, more people will be interested in becoming involved in agriculture.

Powell asked for more support for public research, noting much of today’s research is conducted by private companies which then limit access to it.

“We need access to publicly accessible research data,” she said, asking, “How do we increase dialogue between knowledge-producers and knowledge users?”

 

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