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Originally published:

April 2019
Vol. 105 Issue 4

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Stories In This Edition

One province, one panel

Groundwater deadline extended

Happy as a pig!

Sidebar: Still waiting

Feds pour millions into tree fruit research

Sidebar: Will local procurement help?>

Editorial: Confined spaces

Back Forty: BC farmers need more than a land bank

Island Good campaign drives local sales

Poultry industry seeks to stop infighting

Good egg!

Egg farmers to receive biggest quota boost ever

New entrant focus

Decision day looms for chicken pricing appeal

Producers look to CanadaGAP for certification

Organic sector undertakes core review

Hopping to it!

Island couple named Outstanding Young Farmers

Turkey consumption continues to decline

BC potato growers enjoy a strong footing

Sudden tree fruit dieback a growing concern

Late season BC cherries in global demand

Farmers’ markets aim to be local food hubs

Field trial hopes to reduce phosphorus levels

Future looking bright for BC dairy producers

BC could benefit from US trade battles

Saputo puts its Courtenay plant out to pasture

The land of milk and salmon

Sidebar: Farming for the future

Out of the hands of BC farmers

Codes of practice need producer input

Preparation essential for wildfire response

Sidebar: Relief announced for drought, fire

Sidebar: Be FireSmart with these tips

New traceability regs to track movement

Agriculture a notable threat to species at risk

Improper pesticide use threatens access

Threat to neonics spurs scare in spud growers

Orchard presses forward with diversification

Climate-smart growing

Staying on top of soil health is key to sound farming

No small potatoes

Farm families need to have affairs in order

Rotary parlours go upscale at two FV dairies

Study compares organic, conventional diets

Advisory service foresees growing demand

Sidebar: Tree fruit cutbacks a concern

Island dairy producers hone first aid skills

Woodshed: And that’s how rumours get their teeth

Research farm showcases small projects

Jude’s Kitchen: Shooting stars of spring

 

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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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Study compares organic, conventional diets

Research indicates pesticide levels greatly reduced within days of strict organic protocol

Organics

March 26, 2019 byMargaret Evans

A recent study conducted by Friends of the Earth and published online by Elsevier in the journal Environmental Research explored whether an organic diet would reduce levels of urinary pesticides.

Previous research has done similar studies but they mostly focused on organophosphate pesticides. This study looked at pyrethroids and neonicotinoids, two compounds that are used increasingly in crop production around the world. Neonicotinoids have become one of the most widely used class of insecticides and they account for some 20% of the current global insecticide market.

The fascinating thing is that the study found that switching to an organic diet significantly reduced levels of pesticides in all participants after less than one week.

“On average, the pesticide and pesticide metabolite levels detected dropped by 60.5% after just six days of eating an all-organic diet,” the press release stated.

But here’s the rub.

The study was conducted on only four families represented by seven adults (ages 36-52) and nine children (ages 4-15). They were from Oakland, Minneapolis, Baltimore and Atlanta. Nine were Caucasian, four were Hispanic/Latino and three were African American.

The study was short – just 12 days – but very controlled. For the first five days, participants all ate their conventional diets. During days six through 11, they were all provided with certified organic food to eat whether at home, school or work. Dinners were prepared with all organic ingredients by a licensed chef or caterer and delivered to the participants by the research assistants. The trial ended on day 12 after the final urine collection (158 urine samples in total).

According to the report, there was a 61% drop in chlorpyrifos, an organophosphate pesticide considered moderately hazardous to humans by the World Health Organization, a 95% drop in malathion, an organophosphate insecticide, and an 83% drop in clothianidin, a neonicotinoid pesticide believed to be a main driver of huge pollinator losses. The study also showed a 37% drop in pyrethroids, and a 37% drop in the world’s oldest herbicide 2,4-D. In 2016, the Pest Management Regulatory Agency, a division of Health Canada, concluded in its special review that 2,4-D is not a carcinogen.

What made the study interesting was that the levels by which pesticides and herbicides dropped following a switch to an organic diet occurred in less than one week. The study built on previous research by examining dietary exposure to pesticides that have not been studied in similar intervention research in the past. This study recorded reductions of metabolites in urine samples in 13 pesticides and compounds.

And that begs the question that if these insecticides disappeared so quickly in such a significant amount, how non-persistent are they? And how are scientists rating their danger level?

While claims are made in the report of the many and varied health hazards from exposure to pesticides, it would be helpful to have better clarification on the level of exposure relative to duration and circumstances. This would be valuable for all consumers.

However, the report did acknowledge that gaps exist regarding specific health effects to chronic low-level exposure. The researchers also referred to a study done in 2018 that looked at the consumption habits of 70,000 adults and found that a higher frequency of consuming organic food was protective against several cancers.

Quick to shed

“This important study shows how quickly we can rid our bodies of toxic pesticides by choosing organic,” said Sharyle Patton, director of the Commonweal Biomonitoring Resources Center and co-author of the study.

Ideally, we all want food that is pesticide/herbicide free. But it can come with another cost not always considered.

Studies have shown that organic yields are generally lower than yields from conventional farming since fertilizers are not used. To produce all our food requirements organically would require farming more land and this could impact climate change.

In an international study conducted by Chalmers University of Technology in Sweden, researchers developed a new method for assessing the climate impact from land use. After comparing organic and conventional food production, results showed that organically grown food can result in greater emissions because of the greater land use demand, a fact not always taken into account in comparisons between the production of organic and conventionally produced food.

“The greater land-use in organic farming leads indirectly to higher carbon dioxide emissions, thanks to deforestation,” said Stefan Wirsenius, associate professor in the Department of Space, Earth and the Environment, Chalmers. “The world’s food production is governed by international trade, so how we farm in Sweden influences deforestation in the tropics. If we use more land for the same amount of food, we contribute indirectly to bigger deforestation elsewhere in the world.”

The FOE study is a fascinating look at pesticide levels in humans and, in the bigger picture, it clearly deserves more research to understand not just dietary exposure but climate implications.

Margaret Evans is a freelance writer based in Chilliwack specializing in agricultural science.

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