• Menu
  • Skip to right header navigation
  • Skip to main content
  • Skip to primary sidebar

Before Header

The agricultural news source in British Columbia since 1915
  • Email
  • Facebook
  • Twitter

Country Life In BC Logo

The agricultural news source in British Columbia since 1915

  • Headlines
  • Calendar
  • Subscribe
  • Advertise
  • About
  • Archives
  • Contact
  • Search
  • Headlines
  • Calendar
  • Subscribe
  • Advertise
  • About
  • Archives
  • Contact
  • Search

Primary Sidebar

Originally published:

March 2018
Vol. 104 Issue 3

Subscribe Now!

Sign up for free weekly FARM NEWS UPDATES

Select list(s) to subscribe to


By submitting this form, you are consenting to receive marketing emails from: Country Life in BC, 36 Dale Road, Enderby, BC, V0E1V4. You can revoke your consent to receive emails at any time by using the SafeUnsubscribe® link, found at the bottom of every email. Emails are serviced by Constant Contact
Your information will not be
shared or sold ever

Stories In This Edition

ALR sessions closed to public

Kissin’ cousins

Wine spat heads to court

ALR sidebar: Points for review

Budget boosts ag funding for strategic initiatives

AgProud

Editorial: Good intentions

Back forty: Fires, floods and earthquakes: are your ready?

So where do I get a social license

FIRB review pleases commodities

Islands Ag

Dairy outlook faces growing headwinds

Trade negotiations boost grower uncertainties

Chicken price slides despite new pricing formula

Fruit growers elect Dhaliwal president

Growers discuss SVC audits

This little tyke

Orchard app unveiled at BC Tree Fruit forum

Gala celebrates ag leadership

Ag show attendance down from record set last year

Canadian Ag Partnership “open for business”

Weed will be an ag product unlike any other

Sidebar: Crop rich in histroy, controvery

BC MP appointed ag critic

Research money key to berry sector’s future

Sidebar: Weather hurts 2017 blueberry Yields

Cowichan Valley showcases Islands agriculture

Wildfire season offers valuable lessons

Make a plan and get fire smart

Cattle producers must champion codes of practice

Producers need training for disaster response readiness

For the kids

How do I move forward

Pine Butte kicks off bull sales

High-tech grass production showcased on tour

Environmentally friendly weed control

Sidebar: Mixed results

Hazelnut inventory sets industry baseline

Collaboration ups ante in fight against Wireworm

Sidebar: Going for control

New pest game-changers for BC forage producers

Farm safety is a family tradition on island

New varieties key to industry’s future

Successful farm tours pay attention to detail

Sidebar: No detail too small

Research: UBC perfects test of smoke taint in wine grapes

Sensors help nurseries cut water use up to 60%

Producers encouraged to monitor irrigation water quality

Sidebar: Water sampling tips

Urgan farmers take their dreams up country

Processor capacity challenges small scale producers

New entrants give fresh life to old dairy barns

KPU student receives Tim Armstrong award

Wannabe: Hurry up, Spring!

Woodshed: Clay lives up to all of Ashley’s expectations

Jude’s Kitchen: Spring brunch

More Headlines

Follow us on Facebook

Comments Box SVG iconsUsed for the like, share, comment, and reaction icons

4 days 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

Link thumbnail

Your weekly farm news update

web-extract.constantcontact.com

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
View Comments
  • Likes: 2
  • Shares: 0
  • Comments: 1

Comment on Facebook

Mike Manion Pitt Meadows City Councillor

1 month 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

Link thumbnail

Christmas trees in demand

buff.ly

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…
View Comments
  • Likes: 2
  • Shares: 0
  • Comments: 0

Comment on Facebook

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.
View Comments
  • Likes: 2
  • Shares: 3
  • Comments: 1

Comment on Facebook

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
View Comments
  • Likes: 10
  • Shares: 8
  • Comments: 8

Comment on Facebook

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..

View more comments

2 months ago

The scale of this year's avian flu outbreak now rivals the massive outbreak of 2004. An additional 13 commercial farms in the Fraser Valley have tested positive in the last week. To date, 49 commercial farms and 1.2 million birds have been impacted. CFIA is struggling to keep up with depopulation of sick birds. ... See MoreSee Less

Link thumbnail

AI outbreak rivals 2004

buff.ly

The scale of this year’s outbreak of highly pathogenic avian influenza now rivals the massive outbreak of 2004 that saw farms throughout the Fraser Valley depopulated. An additional 13 commercial…
View Comments
  • Likes: 3
  • Shares: 3
  • Comments: 2

Comment on Facebook

Commercial operations need to reevaluate their stocking densities and overall health and welfare of the animals within their systems if they are ever going to have a fighting chance against this virus.

Yup cause food shortage

Subscribe | Advertise

Weed will be an ag product unlike any other

Bong show ahead as authorities learn to roll with cannabis production

March 1, 2018 byPeter Mitham

ABBOTSFORD – Growers hoping to cash in on Canada’s newest legal cash crop face plenty of challenges as government wrestles with how to treat a crop that has yet to receive legal standing.

Cannabis is grabbing headlines in the mainstream media in advance of Canada legalizing recreational pot (expected by July 1), but Ottawa will continue to exert tight controls on growers, whether they’re producing industrial hemp for fibre, seeds and oil, medicinal strains with soothing cannabinoids or recreational strains with psychoactive tetrahydrocannabinol (THC).

“Hemp and marijuana are the same plant – genetically identical; the only difference is they’ve been bred differently for different purposes,” Peter Scales told the Centre for Organizational Governance in Agriculture (COGA) on February 1. “[But] hemp is not marijuana.”

Scales, a hemp grower who supplies seeds, oil and flours through his Abbotsford company ACI Foods, says this is where the fun will begin when recreational cannabis becomes legal.

To date, the only licensed producers have been growers of industrial strains, which have less than 0.3% THC, and medicinal varieties. Recreational producers will require licences and the current approval process is taking six to 18 months. Were the delay not long enough, a mere 18% of applicants are being approved. They’ll also have to source legitimate sources of seed and work with authorized retailers.

Scales says he expects a shakeout following legalization as producers adjust.

“It’s going to change the landscape and it’s going to affect a lot of people in this room, and this is where we get into the, maybe, confusing part of this discussion,” he said.

On the one hand, licensed producers of medicinal cannabis are securing existing greenhouse facilities to enable them to get rolling as soon as legalization of recreational cannabis occurs.

Without naming names, Scales pointed to last summer’s arrangement between Village Farms Canada LP and Victoria-based Emerald Health Therapeutics Inc. to convert a 25-acre greenhouse into a federally licensed cannabis production facility. The greenhouse could produce up to 75,000 kilograms of marijuana annually – initially for medicinal use, but with the potential for recreational products.

Canopy Growth Corp. is also partnering with SunSelect Produce Inc. of Delta to develop three million square feet in two greenhouses at a 55-acre site in Aldergrove through BC Tweed Joint Venture Inc. Plans target having a crop ready in time for the legalization of recreational cannabis.

Shift in priorities

Scales expects medicinal producers will shift to recreational production because they’ll be able to work with industrial hemp producers to source cannabinoids. However, the use of greenhouses for cannabis could also impact food production.

“It means that the tomatoes and cucumbers that were grown there are not going to be grown there any longer,” he said. “There’s huge displacement on the horizon.”

The displacement of food production for cannabis is an issue the BC Ministry of Agriculture is wrestling with, James Mack, an assistant deputy minister with the ministry and a member of the province’s cannabis secretariat, told COGA.

“Legally, the Agricultural Land Reserve is reserving land for agriculture, but the public thinks of it as reserving land for food production,” he said. “When we start seeing a percentage of the ALR being diverted over to cannabis production, it’s going to provoke that public debate – is this actually what we have the ALR set aside for? It’s one that we’re going to have to get ahead of.”

The issue is rearing its head in the province’s consultation on revitalizing the ALR, continuing a debate when medicinal cannabis was legalized as to whether pharmaceuticals are a legitimate farm product and if it should get the same tax breaks – property and otherwise – as other crops.

“It’s a farming activity and you can’t ban it,” Mack said. “[But] we don’t want to give it the same incentives as farming.”

This means it has limited access to farm tax status, and as a federally regulated narcotic it isn’t eligible for support from business risk management programs and other initiatives under Growing Forward 2. How the legal crop will be handled under the new Canadian Agricultural Partnership is unknown.

“There’s really a few key issues that are facing agriculture right now and the short answer to each of those is, ‘We don’t know yet.’ We’re working on them,” Mack said.

Mack told Country Life in BC that cannabis is categorically different than grapes, which have displaced hundreds of acres of tree fruits in the Okanagan Valley for alcohol production. Cannabis is more potent straight from the plant than grapes.

“Grapes don’t pose a threat in and of themselves,” he said.

The efforts to incorporate the industry in mainstream agriculture are significant, however, and Mack looks forward to working with a community of legal growers.

“Until [July], we don’t have much of a mandate on this,” he said. “I know in two years my ministry’s going to be defending this industry in the same way we defend any other controversial industry we have, but right now it seems weird.”

Related Posts

You may be interested in these posts from the same category.

BC farm cash receipts up

Neighbours raise stink over cannabis farms

Raising a stink

BCAC defends pot growers

Greenhouse vegetables rebound from cannabis

Cannabis growers see the light

‘Green rush’ overwhelms OK planning staff

Previous Post: « The Back 40: It’s time for farmers to speak up
Next Post: Province launches ALR review »

Reader Interactions

Copyright © 2023 Country Life in BC · All Rights Reserved