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Originally published:

DECEMBER 2022
Vol. 108 Issue 12

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Stories In This Edition

Ottawa dishes trade funds

I spy

New money for fruit growers

Regenerative ag tops Ag Days successes

Editorial: A winter’s tale

Back 40: Regenesis: the end of farming as we know it

Viewpoint: The challenges of BC ag industry advocacy

Senate report highlights the need for flood plans

More farms test postive for avian influenza

Ag Briefs: BC Turkey names executive director

Ag Briefs: Province rebrands short course

Ag Briefs: Growers Supply expands

Ag Briefs: Cattleliner accident

Economic outlook challenges farm margins

Farmer markets launch economic impact study

WALI delivers labour update to grapegrowers

Beekeepers abuzz about tech transfer program

New apple varieties may improve profits

UFV grows its berry research capacity

Bayer opens new canola seed production site

Island farmers identify challenges at summit

Consumer demand key to local food production

Comox Valley ag plan undergoes overhaul

Salt Spring Abattoir marks 10th anniversary

Ranchers undertake living lab project

Copper deficiency challenges BC bison productivity

Bison ranchers briefed on emergency protocols

SWBC hires a new program manager

Sidebar: How does certification benefit producers?

Better communcation markted wildfire season

Sidebar: Government extends extreme weather support

Retail partnerships add value to small farms’ production

Research: Researchers barcode bacteria to fight farting cattle

Young butchers make their mark

Farm Story: Shot nerves are the price of success this year

Reduced water use doesn’t hurt cherries

Woodshed: Kenneth explores the old Corbett farm

Family farm finds new markets by diversification

Jude’s Kitchen: Festive flatbreads, dips & spreads

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6 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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Senate report highlights need for flood plans

Dairy farmers shore up emergency response

Sarah Sache, vice-chair of BC Dairy, acknowledges that emergency response planning could always be better. RONDA PAYNE

November 30, 2022 bySandra Tretick

CHILLIWACK – When dairy farmers on the flooded Sumas Prairie started evacuating their herds to buddy farms in November 2021, West River Farm in Rosedale took in eight bottle-fed calves.

“They were freezing cold,” recalls dairy farmer Sarah Sache. “They were in the water, so it took quite a lot of work to keep them alive.”

West River Farm was further from the flooded area, so its involvement in the buddy program was minimal, but still vital to the overall rescue effort. Dairy farmers lost 420 cows with losses totalling upwards of $100 million.

“[It was] definitely an emergency response unlike any other we have conducted in the past,” says Sache, vice-chair of the BC Dairy Association. “We’re working on planning for that more for the future.”

Other industry sectors did not fare as well. Official estimates in the aftermath of the flooding pegged livestock losses at 628,000 chickens and 12,000 hogs.

Johnny Guliker, owner of Trilean Pork, was one of the hog farmers directly impacted by the flooding. He shared his story with the Senate standing committee on agriculture and forestry as part of its investigation into the floods that overwhelmed the Fraser Valley.

“I got pretty well wiped out in this flood,” Guliker told the committee. “When you have a lot of things, animals and people you are trying to rescue, you always seem to do the wrong things.”

He described how they tried everything to save their hogs. They built walls to keep the feed dry. When the first set of dikes failed, they chased the smaller animals to the higher part of the facility. They had few resources left when the second dike broke on the other side of the flats.

“The water just came higher and all of them drowned,” Guliker explained. “Those were futile efforts.”

Guliker was the only producer directly impacted by the flooding who spoke to the Senate committee as it conducted hearings on four days between April and June. Other presenters included the BC Agriculture Council and five producer groups (chicken growers, broiler hatching eggs, blueberries, pork and dairy), First Nations, academics, engineering consultants and federal and municipal officials. All of the transcripts are available online.

On October 27, just as the Fraser Valley was bracing for its first atmospheric river this fall, the Senate released its report, Treading Water: The Impact of and Response to the 2021 British Columbia floods.

The report highlights the causes and impacts of the floods, support measures and lessons learned from the recovery efforts. It makes three recommendations: urging the federal government to work with the BC government and local municipalities to develop a comprehensive Fraser Valley flood plan, providing easy and timely access to natural disaster relief and coordinating with the US government on the management of transboundary waters.

“We heard that 87% of the dykes in Southern Mainland BC were in disrepair and 73% would fail just by water going over the top,” says senate committee chair Rob Black. “There’s significant work to be done. We hope those three recommendations will spur government on.”

Sache says the recommendations are consistent with BC Dairy’s perspective.

“It’s good to see [these] plain language recommendations that will help to put some of these pieces that are much needed for food security into the future into place,” she says. “Obviously, there’s still a lot of work that needs to go into it, but the report acknowledges that this is going to need to be across levels of government to get this done. I think that’s kind of the key takeaway. It’s not one level of government or one group’s situation to deal with. It’s going to be a collaborative, significant process that’s going to need to be ongoing always.”

Developing consensus

Steve Litke, director of water programs with the Fraser Basin Council, agrees.

“There is still a way to go in developing consensus on region-wide flood priorities,” Litke says. “Some guidance may come from a new BC flood strategy, which is now in development and expected next spring.”

Litke says that many communities rely on flood protection dikes as a primary defence, and most of those dikes don’t meet current provincial standards for height or seismic resilience.

“Significant upgrades across the region will be needed for dikes to be effective in a large flood event,” he adds.

Government estimates developed in consultation with industry put the cost of flood-related damages to Fraser Valley farmers at $285 million. Monica Mannerstrӧm, an engineer with Northwest Hydraulic Consultants, further added that damages “would be at least tenfold” should the Fraser River overflow its banks.

The Fraser Basin Council estimates $1 billion of direct impact to the Fraser Valley’s agricultural sector if flooding were similar to the 1894 freshet.

Federal agriculture minister Marie-Claude Bibeau thanked the Senate committee for its study and acknowledged that recent extreme weather events, like the BC floods, have allowed the federal government to learn and improve its processes.

“In collaboration with the provinces, we have made improvements to the business risk management programs and all have supported the idea of incorporating climate risk in the future,” Bibeau says in a statement e-mailed to Country Life in BC. “In addition to the great resilience of producers and their willingness to build back better, what I retain from these disasters is the great collaboration between the affected provinces and the federal government, which allows programs to be deployed quickly.”

Quickly is a subjective term. Many of the producer groups raised concerns about how long it took for payments to flow to producers.

In an interview with Country Life in BC before the Senate report was released, BC agriculture minister Lana Popham acknowledged that a similar flooding event could easily happen again this year.

“We’ve been working with the associations and trying to support them as they shore up their emergency preparedness response plans,” said Popham. “We expect things to happen again. And so we’re trying to help producers prepare.”

She highlighted BC Dairy’s tabletop exercise, and their work on developing an inventory of livestock transport and suggested moving cows to buddy farms or areas of higher ground earlier in an emergency scenario.

In an e-mail , the BC Ministry of Forests noted that the province continues to work alongside First Nations, local governments and other partners to reduce flood risk in the Fraser Valley and that many components toward a comprehensive plan for flood mitigation have been advanced through work on the Lower Mainland Flood Management Strategy.

In March, former premier John Horgan and Washington State governor Jay Inslee announced a transboundary initiative to respond to Nooksack River flooding. Two technical site visits took place in July and September.

As the one-year anniversary of the flood approached, the BC Ministry of Transportation announced the reopening of Hwy 8 to all vehicle traffic, once again connecting Spences Bridge and Merritt, and Mike Farnworth, Minister of Public Safety and Attorney General, announced $1.6 million in Disaster Financial Assistance funding for permanent repairs to the Sumas River main dike. The work was expected to wrap up in November.

With files from Kate Ayers

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