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Originally published:

MARCH 2022
Vol. 108 Issue 3

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Stories In This Edition

Lucky chickens

$227m rebuild fund

Glyphosate shortage looms

Province opens ALR to agritech development

Editorial: Divorced from the earth

Back 40: Broken supply chain weakens food system

Viewpoint: BC’s emergency response needs improvement

Building back better means avoiding past mistakes

Sidebar: Grand Forks initiative protects farms

Rural, urban areas prepare for extreme weather

Ag Briefs: Property owner appeals BC SPCA seizure

Ag Briefs: Province sued over mind ban

Farm income projected to reach new heights

Potato growers brace for higher input costs

Keeping cranberries cool a hot topic

Rewarding farmers for enhancing riparian areas

Sidebar: Farmers need not apply

Diversification drives growth of organic farm

Leadership skills can help farmers cope with disaster

Winter rainbow

Compost facilities facing pushback

Cheese leads the way as BC dairies seek capacity

Island yogurt producer boosting production

Grape growers prepare for climate change

The perfect solution for farmers on the go

Small-lot egg producer awarded quota

Sidebar: Future quota draws likely limited

Broiler health in spotlight for small-lot farmers

Pest data helps with management decisions

Research: Researchers discover a world of apple microbiomes

Farms meet the demand for local food

Better berry harvester meets growers’ needs

Farm Story: Spring demands the old heave-ho

Safety in the spotlight as farms recover

Woodshed: Henderson style has chins wagging

Chilliwack teams plow past the century mark

Jude’s Kitchen: Spring has sprung! Time to make bread!

 

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3 weeks ago

It’s been four years since the last tulip festival was held in Abbotsford, but this year’s event promises to be an even bigger spectacle than ever. Spanning 27 acres along Marion Road, Lakeland Flowers will display more than 70 varieties of the spring blossom, including fringe tulips and double tulips, the first of six months of flower festivals hosted by the farm. Writer Sandra Tretick spoke with Lakeland Flowers owner Nick Warmerdam this spring to find out how the floods on Sumas Prairie in 2021 have had an impact on his business plan as he transitions from wholesale cut flower grower to agri-tourism. We've posted the story to our website this month. It's a good read.

#CLBC #countrylifeinbc #tulipfestival
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Tulip grower makes the shift to agritourism

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ABBOTSFORD – On a bright sunny day in early April, Nick Warmerdam points out his office window at No. 4 and Marion roads to a spot about half a kilometre away across the Trans-Canada Highway.
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Omg 🥹 Jared Huston let’s go pls

4 weeks ago

Farming, like any other job.. only you punch in at age 5 and never punch out 🚜 ... See MoreSee Less

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Easton Roseboom Levi Roseboom🚜

4 weeks ago

The province is allocating $15 million to be administered by the Investment Agriculture Foundation of BC. for a perennial crop replant program benefitting tree fruit, hazelnut, berry and grape growers. The program aims to cover 100% of plant removal costs and 75% of replanting costs. Funds are also available for sector development. The new program replaces a suite of sector-specific replant programs and recognizes the importance of sector adaptation in the face of market, disease and weather challenges. ... See MoreSee Less

The province is allocating $15 million to be administered by the Investment Agriculture Foundation of BC. for a perennial crop replant program benefitting tree fruit, hazelnut, berry and grape growers. The program aims to cover 100% of plant removal costs and 75% of replanting costs. Funds are also available for sector development. The new program replaces a suite of sector-specific replant programs and recognizes the importance of sector adaptation in the face of market, disease and weather challenges.
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4 weeks ago

Just a week after the Canadian Food Inspection Agency officials revoked the last primary control zones established in the Fraser Valley to control last fall’s outbreak of highly pathogenic avian influenza, a new detection on April 29 at a commercial premises in Chilliwack underscored the risk of a spring wave. This is the first new detection since January 22, also in Chilliwack, and brings to 104 the number of premises affected since the current outbreak began April 13, 2022. The disease has impacted 3.7 million birds in BC over the past year. ... See MoreSee Less

Just a week after the Canadian Food Inspection Agency officials revoked the last primary control zones established in the Fraser Valley to control last fall’s outbreak of highly pathogenic avian influenza, a new detection on April 29 at a commercial premises in Chilliwack underscored the risk of a spring wave. This is the first new detection since January 22, also in Chilliwack, and brings to 104 the number of premises affected since the current outbreak began April 13, 2022. The disease has impacted 3.7 million birds in BC over the past year.
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Any other details for FVN and chillTV please? radiodon11@gmail.com

4 weeks ago

The province is contributing $3.2 million for upgrades to the Barrowtown pump station in Abbotsford that was overwhelmed during the November 2021 flooding on Sumas Prairie, part of a collaborative approach to flood mitigation in the region. During a press conference at the BC Ministry of Agriculture and Food offices in Abbotsford today, the province said a collaborative approach that includes First Nations is needed as Abbotsford pursues a comprehensive flood mitigation strategy due to the potential impacts on Indigenous lands. Agriculture's interests will be represented by technical teams within the agriculture ministry. ... See MoreSee Less

The province is contributing $3.2 million for upgrades to the Barrowtown pump station in Abbotsford that was overwhelmed during the November 2021 flooding on Sumas Prairie, part of a collaborative approach to flood mitigation in the region. During a press conference at the BC Ministry of Agriculture and Food offices in Abbotsford today, the province said a collaborative approach that includes First Nations is needed as Abbotsford pursues a comprehensive flood mitigation strategy due to the potential impacts on Indigenous lands. Agricultures interests will be represented by technical teams within the agriculture ministry.
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I sure hope part of that money is to educate the people in charge of the pumps and drainage system! They just relayed on computers and weren’t even physically monitoring the water levels. I’ve lived in the Fraser Valley my whole life and the old guys managing that system know how to do it. The new generation just sit behind computer screens and don’t physically watch the water levels. That system works very well when you do it right. The Fraser river levels are very important. The system is designed to drain the Sumas Canal (the part that runs thru the valley) into the Fraser. When they let it get backed up it put pressure on the dyke and the weak part burst. Simple science. And yes, the dykes need to be worked on too. Abbotsford has not been maintaining properly for years.

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The perfect solution for farmers on the go

Shipping container offers packing facilities and cold storage

Matthew Kyriakides, director of land management at the Sandown Centre for Regenerative Agriculture in North Saanich, standing in front of the centre’s new GAP Can vegetable packing cube. SUBMITTED

March 1, 2022 bySandra Tretick

NORTH SAANICH – Out in the fields of the Sandown Centre for Regenerative Agriculture in North Saanich, something innovative is happening.

If you drive by the 83-acre site on Glamorgan Road, once home to the Sandown Racetrack, you’d be hard-pressed to see anything out of the ordinary. Sure, there are two new 10-foot shipping containers sitting out there, but those are just used to store tools, aren’t they?

But according to Ty James, the man behind the containers, they’re a game-changer for small farmers that produce field crops, especially those who want to avoid sinking cash into costly infrastructure on leased properties.

James, a 35-year-old market gardener who grows produce on leased farmland in North Saanich and sells to grocery stores like Country Grocer and Red Barn Market, knows what it’s like to move his operations from one farm to another. He used to lease two acres in Central Saanich before outgrowing that space three years ago. He now farms five acres in field production and 20,000 square feet of greenhouses.

“I quickly realized that farming is a business of economies of scale and that I needed more land in order to make a living, and I also needed better infrastructure,” says James. “I was packing in a greenhouse in the summertime that was getting up to 40 degrees. I had a couple little household fridges strapped together, packing into clamshells, just trying to make the most of it.”

It was insufficient for what he needed to do to meet his buyers’ exacting specifications.

James says the CanadaGAP program is one of the must-haves for farmers today, because that’s what larger grocery chains demand. Even though there are about 1,000 farms in BC with GAP certification – the highest rate of participation in the country – James notes that most farmers don’t have it yet, especially smaller growers.

GAP stands for good agricultural practices and James wanted to design infrastructure that would give farmers access to affordable GAP and HACCP-compliant infrastructure. He says CanadaGAP certification is important because it provides assurance to retailers that fresh produce growers are following appropriate food safety procedures.

James believes having access to post-harvest infrastructure is just as important as having fields and fencing. By infrastructure, he means packinghouses and walk-in coolers; a dry place to store labels and packing materials and a cool place to store product during hot weather.

Several companies, like Freight Farms out of the US, sell vertical farming and hydroponic farming systems in shipping containers but through his own company, GAP Can, James is planning something entirely different.

“We’re providing infrastructure for field-growing operations,” says James. “With the heat dome we had last year, it would be virtually impossible to grow successfully without this type of infrastructure. You need access to a shady cold spot to keep your produce fresh as you pack it and get it ready to go to market.”

Two summers ago, he built an early prototype on the farm he is currently leasing with a grant from the BC On-Farm Food Safety Program.

To further develop the concept, James obtained $32,000 through the Canada-BC Agri-Innovation Program and entered into contracts last summer with Sandown Centre and Lytton First Nation to build what he calls “version two prototypes.” James worked with Keith Hayton of K. Hayton Construction Ltd. on the build.

Each unit – built from a shipping container sold off after a one-way trip from China – is custom-built to meet the customer’s needs. That means a lot of discussions on layout and design. They are built to allow producers to achieve CanadaGAP certification, are Canada Safety Association-approved and inspected for road transportation.

“We wanted to design something around CanadaGAP because I get audited on my farm every year,” says James. “We’re trying to service the area of the market that’s like myself, leasehold farmers, people that want to farm but need infrastructure and don’t want to spend hundreds of thousands of dollars to build it.”

The prototype at Sandown was built using two 10-foot shipping containers, avoiding the need for a building permit. One unit is set up for packing and the other is cold storage. Another unit – in a standard 20-foot container – was in the process of being delivered to the Lytton First Nation last month for a large-scale market garden project. Delivery was delayed by wildfires, flooding and mudslides last year.

The little cubes, which arrived at Sandown in January, still need an electrical hookup. Sandown Centre has a 10-year lease on the land from North Saanich and it in turn subleases small plots to farmers. What the centre offers its growers is a cross between land-leasing and farm school that includes learning about horticulture and business.

Sandown director of community and partner engagement Jen Rashleigh says the GAP cubes, as she likes to call them, are a complete and utter game-changer.

Growers will be able to use Sandown’s units this spring to weigh, bunch, pack and store produce, giving them the option to achieve CanadaGAP certification if they want to enter bigger markets.

“If we don’t have a processing unit it’s a major setback,” says Rashleigh. “[With it] they can get the audit and they can get into the bigger retailers.”

Having the units on site means they can also serve as a demonstration for other growers.

The cubes, sold through James’ company GAP Can, come in different sizes and configurations – what James terms modular infrastructure. The company’s flagship unit is a 20-foot container with a vegetable processing area and a walk-in cooler starting around $35,000. Forty-foot containers are also possible for larger applications.

With these prototypes complete, James is now in discussions on two bigger projects, including a multi-unit food hub for Lytton First Nation and a three-unit prototype for a poultry processing plant at Glassen Farms near Nanaimo. He’s also looking for a new yard in Langford for the upcoming builds.

 

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