2 HAZELNUT TRIALS
O’Dell to bring in six new EFB- resistant varieties from Oregon in tissue culture. Helped by a grant from the Investment Agriculture Foundation of BC, the growers planted the first of the new trees in 2011 and another set in 2013 in a trial to see how they would perform. Hooge is one of the participants in the trial and now has 230 Yamhill, 200 Jefferson and 70 Sacajawea trees as well as a few Eta, Theta and Gamma pollinators in his orchard.
“Every fourth tree in every third row is a pollinator,” Hooge said.
He stressed the trees are “resistant” but not immune to the disease, saying pruning can keep the disease at bay, if not eliminate it altogether. “We started seeing some EFB in the new trees in 2013,” O’Dell reported, telling growers to apply an approved fungicide on young trees after
bud break and prune out and burn any affected limbs. Hooge has followed that strategy and his new trees show few signs of EFB despite being located right next to his heavily infected Barcelona orchard.
Both he and O’Dell say they have already learned a lot about managing the new varieties, including how and when to plant them. That was obvious in Hooge’s orchard as the 2013 plantings appear to be more vigorous and productive than the 2011 plantings, despite being two years younger.
Although this has been a good year for production, growers wrestled with what to do with their nuts. Because so many of the infected orchards have been uprooted, there were not enough nuts for John Vandenbrink, who has the only remaining
commercial-scale nut dryer in the area, to run his dryer this year. Instead, most growers sent their nuts to Hooge for drying, used other small-scale dryers or shipped their nuts to Oregon for drying.
New growers
In the meantime, O’Dell and the other BCHGA directors are doing all they can to interest new growers.
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“We received an agriculture enhancement grant from the Abbotsford Foundation and are partnering with the University of the Fraser Valley and a farm in Abbotsford to make the general public more aware of hazelnuts,” BCHGA president Neal Tebrinke said. O’Dell said hazelnuts are ideal for small acreages,
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claiming “you can get enough nuts from two acres to get your farm status.”
Denise Parker of MNP
concurred, saying hazelnuts could “help fund a farming lifestyle” and preserve farm status for capital gains exemption. She presented an
years, that will level out as the orchard comes into production. By year 20,
growers will have generated a total gross margin of $40,000 per acre based on current prices.
HELMUT HOOGE
enterprise budget prepared in July 2015 which suggests that even though growers can expect losses in the first three
ANIMAL WELFARE
legislation to Dairy Farmers of Canada, its national
counterpart, Hargreaves is no stranger to animal welfare issues.
He participated personally in the investigation of Chilliwack Cattle Sales Ltd., whose owner plans to plead guilty to charges at a court appearance scheduled for December. A total of 20 charges were brought against the farm, 16 of them under the province’s Prevention of Cruelty to Animals Act. Hargreaves maintains, however, that no amount of legislation can take the place of good behaviour. “You can have all the legislation that you want, but what you need is actual strong industry practices at the ground level,” he told Country Life in BC.
Those are something he believes the BC dairy industry
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“We’ve implemented the full animal welfare pro-action protocols and we make sure that as an industry we’re moving ever-forward in terms of animal care standards,” he said.
Code of practice
Since 2014, dairy farms across the province have been expected to comply with the industry’s seven- year-old code of practice. The association worked with the BC SPCA to incorporate the code within BC’s animal welfare legislation, making it easier to prosecute farmers who violate animal welfare standards.
Recent audits of animal care practices at 73 dairy farms found that a quarter of farms were non-compliant, but Hargreaves said that such discoveries show that the industry has a functioning self-regulation regime. The same holds true for tests that saw 11 farms fined $65,000 this summer for sending
O’Dell believes prices will only improve, noting there is a “growing
(worldwide) demand for all nuts.”
There may even be an option for potential new
COUNTRY LIFE IN BC • NOVEMBER 2016 FROM PAGE 1
growers who are interested in hazelnuts but may not have the time or expertise to plant and/or manage the orchard.
Custom services
James and Anthony Dick, who have years of experience growing cedar hedging, are planting five acres of hazelnuts on their own property this fall and will then offer that service to other growers.
“We have the equipment to prep and plant an orchard and will purchase harvesting equipment to offer custom work services on a per hour basis,” they said.
FROM PAGE 1
antibiotic-laced milk for processing. While bad on the part of the farmers, effective protocols meant that none of the milk ended up on store shelves.
“The public perception tends to be very often leaning towards knee-jerk reactions towards the negative, based on a salacious headline by a journalist rather than the actual reality of industry practices,” Hargreaves said. “If there weren’t tests in place, those tests wouldn’t be positive. … It’s spun as a negative, but in reality it’s an outward positive because of an effective safety system.”
Education Ongoing education
programs ensure that existing protocols will continue to serve industry and consumers well.
“We have a very strong self- regulating protocol on animal welfare,” Hargreaves said. “We keep it a very topical subject in terms of our various conferences and seminars.”
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