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Originally published:

May 2018
Vol. 104 Issue 5

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Stories In This Edition

Fraser Valley bee shortage overstated

Still waiting: ag waste regs

Cannabis shift delivers hit to vegetable sector

Peter’s legacy

Editorial: The straight dope

Back Forty: Our best friend deserves greater recognitiontory

Overheard: Farmers should embrace First Nations model

Change is coming, fast and furious

Foundation effective in fueling ag projects

New meat producer association launched

Sidebar: On board

Traceability regs to include animal movement

Report recommends FN approval on tenures

Province urged to regulate farmhouse size

Dairy group highlights industry needs on tour

Ottawa plays hardball with Agassiz leases

IAF showcases innovative ag projects

Neonics in water not from farm operations

Potato growers need to exploit opportunities

Spuds in tubs

Vegetable commission optimistic

Sidebar: Variety update

MacAulay grilled over farm labour issues

Apiarists want pollination income to count

Sidebar: BCHPA launches pollinator health study

Raspberry growers increase board size

Popham meets with berry growers

Hazelnut growers flush with optimism

Ranchers schooled in disaster preparation

Westgen eyes beef semen sales for growth

Big prize money draws big entries

Holstein auction sets new sale benchmark

North 40 bull tops Vanderhoof sale

Reclaiming market share in a global economy

Day-neutrals show promise for strawberry fields

Weather skews results in Peace variety trials

Salal berries have market potential

Vole control in blueberries

Wannabe: When tragedy brings us together

Watchful eye

Woodshed Chronicles: Henderson masterminds an apology

Jude’s Kitchen: Celebrate May with beef on the ‘barbie’

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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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Salal berries have market potential

May 1, 2018 byMargaret Evans

Sometimes, some of the best health foods are right in front of you – or perhaps swirling in a glass-filled gift from a buddie.

“A friend gave me a bottle of dessert wine that included some salal juice as a present,” says professor Peter Constabel, director of the Centre for Forest Biology, University of Victoria. “I had done previous work on blueberries [and] salal is in the same plant family as blueberry. The fruit had been used extensively by First Nations, so I thought it could be an interesting species to study further.”

As it turned out, it was very interesting. The wild berry of the coastal areas of the Pacific Northwest is rich in health-promoting chemical compounds that include tannins and anthocyanins. The compounds give the berry an edge as an antioxidant superstar with benefits that could perhaps reduce the risks of cancer, cardiovascular and neurodegenerative diseases, as well as boosting anti-inflammatory benefits.

“I was surprised, though not entirely, since salal foliage is known to be high in tannins,” says Constabel. “It’s hard to say which one [when compared to blueberry] is superior. However, our side-by-side lab tests showed that salal has several times more tannin than blueberry and a diet rich in tannin is associated with reduced risk of several diseases, including cardiovascular disease. On the other hand, blueberry is also rich in a variety of compounds.”

In addition, salal berries contain anthocyanins which are the red and purplish pigments found in many fruits including blueberries.

“The anthocyanins may also contribute to the beneficial effects of fruits and berries although I think that tannins are more effective as health-promoting plant chemicals,” he says. “Much depends on how the body absorbs and/or modifies these compounds and this is not always well understood. Salal also has significant levels of a specific tannin similar to that found in cranberry that is helpful against urinary tract infection so that is quite interesting.”

Five years ago, Constabel became the first in the world to show, at the molecular level, how blueberries ripen and produce the antioxidant flavonoids for which they are celebrated. His research team, along with collaborators in Finland and Italy, then focused on salal berries, measuring more than 50 phytochemical compounds during the fruit’s development. They discovered that salal flavonoid concentrations are the highest among common berries with the exception of highbush cranberry, a wild honeysuckle relative. Tannins proved to be up to five times higher than in blueberries while anthocyanins came in about 1.5 times higher.

Northwest native

The purple-black salal berries grow on shrubs native to the Pacific Northwest. The plants have leathery leaves and can grow up to three metres tall. The spring flowers are tiny white bells and the small dark berries are slightly hairy. First Nations people valued them fresh, dipped in oolichan grease, dried into cakes and fruit leather as winter food, or used them to thicken salmon eggs. Today, salal berries can make great jams and preserves.

The obvious next question is whether they can be grown commercially.

“I think locally and in previously forested sites, some people are already growing salal for berries as a non-traditional forest product,” says Constabel. “Quite a few people pick it wild for their own use. It seems to do well as an urban landscape plant, so it’s not difficult to grow. In sunny sites with irrigation, I believe [it] can produce lots of fruit. However, salal doesn’t produce berries all at once but spread over the season, so this makes it more difficult to harvest in a commercial context. The farmed blueberries that we see in BC are all commercial varieties, unlike salal, which is basically a wild shrub. So, agronomic varieties do not really exist at this point.”

But that, of course, could change given the will of berry farmers not to mention the enthusiasm and support of consumers. Constabel says that there has been an amazing response from the public. Many people know the plant as a landscape feature but had no idea of the value of its edible berries.

The research on salal berries was published in the March issue of Phytochemistry, the international journal of plant chemistry, plant biochemistry and molecular biology and the study was funded by the Natural Sciences and Engineering Research Council.

Constabel is planning further studies on salal, focusing on the function of the berry’s tannins as a defense against fungi. Salal are unusual in that they remain on the plant all winter without getting moldy and a hypothesis is that the high concentrations of tannins protect the berries against fungal attacks.

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