8 ARMYWORM lookout


disappearing and so I just went out and cut it all down, baled it and bagged it. I only got 50-odd [round] bales when I normally get 300.” Haack culled his herd over the winter and is down to 32 from 130 head last year. He took it as a sign he needed to change pace. “I've always had a job on the side to pay for my bad habit of farming, and it's not just a little farm,” he says. (He farms 120 acres.) “I'm 61 now and I haven't had a holiday since '92. The wife and I were talking, and we were just going to downsize anyways and make it a little bit easier on ourselves.” Others paid to keep their


herds alive. It cost Terry Shannon $150,000 to maintain his herd of 400 grass-fed dairy cows over the winter. His 500 acres of grassland is enough to support his entire herd, but


BCDairy HISTORICAL SOCIETY


the armyworms took over. “I had to buy over 400 tons


of hay,” he says. “At this time last year already, I was feeding about three tons of hay a day just because we didn't have any real grass growth of any significance after about the last week of June.” If this wasn’t bad enough, the insect’s picky eating habits upset the balance of plants in his fields. “On third cut, all the


regrowth was pretty much clover and [as a result] I ended up losing a couple animals with bloat, which I never pexperienced before,” he says. This year, Shannon’s fields


are in repair. He has already overseeded 120 acres and has around 50 acres left to seed of what he calls “total grass kill.”


While last year’s infestation may have been unusual,


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THE BC DAIRY HISTORICAL SOCIETY IS SEEKING NOMINATIONS of producers, processors, BC Dairy Pioneers, supporters of the BC Dairy industry, writers or other individuals who have made outstanding contributions to the BC Dairy Industry. To nominate a worthy individual, submit a short summary of your nominee’s contributions to the industry. Nominations are to be submitted online at www.bcdairyhistory.ca under the Achievement Awards Tab. Nominations close October 5th. The award will be presented at the 2018 BC Dairy Conference Gala Banquet.


Hueppelsheuser says it can happen again. Where and when is tough to predict, however. She says the best growers can do is check with local farming associations and keep an eye on their fields. “There's nothing you can


do to prevent [an outbreak]. If the conditions are good for growing grass, they're going to be really good for armyworm,” she says. “The females look for lush, green


growth in order to lay eggs and if the conditions are good, they'll lay more eggs and the larvae will grow faster.” If armyworm does


reappear this summer in large numbers, Hueppelsheuser says there are ways to mitigate the damage. Quickly cutting the grass or grazing animals in fields will help because armyworm prefers fresh, uncut grass. Natural


COUNTRY LIFE IN BC • AUGUST 2018 nfrom page 7


predators of armyworm are parasitic wasps, parasitic flies and predatory beetles as well as birds. Pesticides also work. Hueppelsheuser’s team has joined with researchers in California, Oregon, Washington and Eastern North America in an attempt find out exactly where in the US they come from and what wind currents they use to travel around Western North America.


Dairy feeling price pressures Milk prices down while input costs increase


Honourable Lana Popham: I would like to inform you about some of the challenges facing dairy farmers in BC. For the last four to five years, we have faced a constantly falling milk price. The price


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has fallen upwards of 10% in this time frame and we are being paid the same prices as we were 20 years ago with all our expenses escalating each year. Farmers are putting off capital purchases to replace worn out equipment. They go


farther into debt to purchase equipment and face a life of higher payments just to keep producing their quota. This puts severe challenges in place for farm family transitions as there is very little stability on milk prices. As well, during the last few years, dairy farms have had big increases in quota along with sharp decreases in farmgate milk prices. Efficiency of scale can only go so far when large capital expenses are required to accommodate increased herd size. The milk price under a


quota system should be based on ”cost of production.” The reasons for the drop in farmgate price are complex,


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but I will give you a few of the main reasons. Our country signed an ingredient strategy with Canadian processors to avoid having to dispose of an unwanted by-product: skim milk powder. It was agreed to sell this milk at a rock bottom price slightly below the world milk price. The milk sold at this low price amounts to 25% to 30% of dairy farmer paycheques. Another factor that drops the farmgate milk price is our internal agreement with provincial milk board partners across Canada. Millions of dollars get deducted each month from the BC milk pool, and instead of being paid to local BC dairy farmers, the money is sent to the other provinces to help support their milk prices. Milk pooling agreements were signed in years past that lock BC milk producers into this arrangement. I would suggest that, as a


province, we attempt to renegotiate our agreements with the other provinces and try to get into a position where we avoid sending millions in equalization payments to the other provinces. BC dairy farmers face land and feed costs twice as high as dairy producers in the Prairie provinces. It would be good to find a mutually agreeable deal with our provincial milk partners. If we look to the past, we can see that we have succeeded by focusing on high production, excellent milk quality and a higher focus on producing mainly for the BC fluid milk market. With all the trade deals going on with the US and European Union farmers all overproducing and dropping the world milk price, it is easy to “sit on our hands“ and do nothing. I would encourage our


industry leaders to start trying to find a “made in Canada” solution to some of the price challenges that we as dairy farm families face. Rick Vandenberg Bulkley Valley


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