Beef Dairy Biosecurity


TRU program marks one-year anniversary Roller coaster pricing


Poultry producers encouraged to stay vigilant


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Province asked to ante up


by DAVID SCHMIDT


ABBOTSFORD – The BC Agriculture Council is asking the provincial government for $15 million over the next three years to help agriculture producers and processors adapt to changing consumer demands. Although the request is part of its election strategy, BCAC executive director Reg Ens hopes government will cough up before the May election is called.


He says the money is needed to harmonize traceability, biosecurity and environmental programs across the sector and to “engage society in a meaningful way.”


The council has identified maintaining and enhancing public trust in farmers as a


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1.888.675.7999 Past its prime, this horse-drawn hay mower is a treasured lawn ornament at a farm near Enderby. NAOMI MCGEACHY PHOTO Farm over troubled water Special report by PETER MITHAM


SPALLUMCHEEN – It’s a warm autumn afternoon, and Dale Jansen is between chores on his farm in the Hullcar Valley near Armstrong. A hawk soars overhead while Jansen’s cattle await the afternoon milking crew.


Despite critics who point to the farm – the second largest in the area – as the source of nitrates found in the water the Steele Springs Water District supplies to about 160 people, the farm isn’t a faceless corporate dairy. “It’ll be my son, my daughter and then two gals from down the road that are helping,” Jansen says in the lunch room just down from


the 50-stall carousel milking parlour. “I fed the cows this morning. Everyone thinks this is a big corporation. This is the family farm. This is as much a family farm as the majority of dairies that are milking 120 cows.”


While the farm is a newcomer to the area, arriving in 2006, the Jansens have been dairying for three generations.


Brothers Andrew, Dale and Harold relocated the farm from Matsqui when it couldn’t acquire the land it needed to grow. Dairying has become a volume business, and greater production keeps farmers such as the Jansens in the game as a tide of cheap imports keeps prices down.


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