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Abattoir cashing in on demand for local product
COUNTRY LIFE IN BC • NOVEMBER 2016
Meadow Valley Meats general manager Chris Les look on as a meat cutter demonstrates the fine art of cutting up a quarter of beef during the Chilliwack Agricultural Tour.
CHILLIWACK – The growing demand for local product has created lots of opportunities for BC agriculture producers and processors, Meadow Valley Meats general manager Chris Les told Chilliwack Agricultural Tour participants in September. MVM is one operation capitalizing on those opportunities. “I think local is a trend, not a fad,” Les said. MVM began its life as Fraser Valley Meats, a retail butcher shop in Chilliwack, in 1969. It transitioned to a full- service abattoir and wholesaler early this decade, building its main facilities in Chilliwack in 2010 and expanding them two years ago.
“We now have six locations in the Lower Mainland including abattoirs in Surrey and Pitt Meadows, seven delivery trucks and 140 employees. Half work in Chilliwack,” Les told the group.
MVM processes about 10,000 head of beef and about 7,500 lambs and goats annually as well as distributing beef, poultry and pork from other suppliers in BC and Alberta. Their customer base includes other butcher shops, specialty retailers and white table restaurants. Recently, the company started sourcing beef from northern Okanagan ranches, labeling it as 63 Acres Premium Beef and offering full traceability from the farm to the retailer. Although most BC beef goes to abattoirs in Alberta and Washington, Les says MVM’s new 63 Acres program “keeps $4 million of beef in BC annually.”
Tim Armstrong Memorial Bursary in Agriculture and Journalism
We are pleased to congratulate Kasha Foster of North Vancouver on being awarded the Tim Armstrong Memorial Bursary for 2015. At the time of receiving the award Kasha was enrolled in third year in the Global Resource Systems program at the University of British Columbia in the Faculty of Land and Food Systems.
In memory of JR (Tim) Armstrong's outstanding contribution to British Columbia journalism and the agricultural industry, a bursary in the minimum amount of $1,000 is awarded each year from the proceeds of the JR (Tim) Armstrong Memorial Fund. The fund is raised by public subscription and administered by the BC Farm Writers' Association. Applications for the 2016 scholarship are now being accepted. Contact Bob Mitchell 604-951-8223 or
robert_mitchell@telus.net.
www.bcfwa.ca
Members of the Chilliwack Agricultural Tour watch a load of hops being fed into the harvester at Chilliwack Hops. (David Schmidt photos)
Room for more expansion The hop revival in Chilliwack is a work in progress
Stories by DAVID SCHMIDT
CHILLIWACK – With Molson Coors set to relocate its brewery in Chilliwack, it was no surprise that the Chilliwack Agricultural Commission chose to feature hops and beer on their 2016 tour in September.
Hops were once a staple crop in eastern Abbotsford and Chilliwack, with over 3,000 acres in production. However, by the mid 1970’s, all those hops had been taken out as large breweries reduced the hop content of their beer and growers in Yakima Valley took over the remaining market. That changed in the early 2000s with the advent of craft and microbreweries and brew pubs. There are now over 5,000 small breweries in the US and close to 150 in BC. Those breweries not only use more hops but many have built their business on being “local,” which includes using
local hops.
That created an opportunity for local hop production to again become profitable. Leading the resurgence is John Lawrence of Chilliwack Hops. What began as a retirement project five years ago is now a booming business employing 15. “I came in at the right time,” Lawrence told the tour, saying he grew about 15 varieties of hops on 200 acres this year and expects to be at 350 to 400 acres next year. Most hops are grown on a sharecropper basis. The landowner provides the land, Chilliwack Hops provides the plants,
management, harvesting and marketing and the company and the landowner share the revenue.
To do that, Chilliwack Hops has the largest hop nursery in Canada, producing 100,000 plants in 10 greenhouses, three hop harvesters (each harvesting an acre per day),
expansive dryers, a pelletizer and vacuum packaging equipment. The dryers and pelletizer turn 1,500 pounds of fresh hops into 400 pounds of dried pellets. Each pound of dried hop pellets is enough to produce 10 gallons of India Pale Ale or 40 gallons of lager beer.
“It takes just 24 hours from harvest to packaging,” Lawrence says.
A 2013 study said BC breweries could support 500 acres of hops but that number has since grown exponentially. Both the number and size of local craft breweries are increasing. Central City, BC’s largest craft brewery, alone uses 150 acres of hops, Lawrence stated, adding he is also developing a growing export market.
“We have sold our hops to 30 US states, Mexico, Costa Rica and Russia. Our goal is to become an exporting country instead of a net importer.”
Production Progra
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Ph: 1-866-398-2848 Email:
VBP@cattlemen.bc.ca www.cattlemen.bc.ca/vbp.htm
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