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COUNTRY LIFE IN BC • JANUARY 2019 New chair for Farm Industry Review Board Peter Donkers, who retired


from the Investment Agriculture Foundation of BC in 2017, is the new chair of the BC Farm Industry Review Board.


addition to Donkers and Sakalauskas include Tamara Leigh, Mary O’Callaghan and Daphne Stancil. Stancil was reappointed on July 31, and joined by newcomer O’Callaghan. Absent are


Ag Briefs EDITED BY PETER MITHAM


The province appointed


Donkers to the role November 15, replacing former chair John Les, whose appointment was rescinded a year early. It also appointed long-time board member Al Sakalauskas as vice-chair. The appointment saw


Donkers step into a number of long-running cases, including appeals of the BC Chicken Marketing Board’s pricing model and the denial of funding to the BC Chicken Growers Association for a feasibility study into a grower-owned hatchery and/or processing plant. Current members in


previous board


members Corey Van’t Haaff, whose term expired


November 30, 2018, and Diane Pastoor, whose term ended July 31, 2018. —Peter Mitham


BC Tree Fruits


shake-up BC Tree Fruits


Co-operative, the grower- owned co-op that’s the biggest packinghouse in BC, is shaking up its executive team.


The board of directors posted ads in late November for new chief executive and chief financial officers.


The move came two years to the day after Stan Swales took the helm CEO, and almost six years after Warren Everton joined as CFO in February 2013. The co-op has not issued a statement and president Jeet Dukhia, who expressed confidence in 2016 that Swales would work “towards a strong, sustainable industry for our members,” could not be reached for comment. However, Swales


acknowledged that the scale and diversity of the co-op’s membership was a unique challenge when he joined in 2016. With roots stretching back to 1936, the current co-op absorbed four other packing co-ops in 2008 to offer its 430-plus member growers economies of scale. Those are impossible for


any one grower in a region where the average orchard is just 10 acres. Growers face a market behemoth in the form of Washington State to the south, and membership in a co-op with annual revenues


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of $130 million gives them clout. Yet with more than 430 members, the co-op includes operations that are both thriving and struggling. Yet several growers have struck out on their own in recent years, forming rival entities and adding to competition in the market. “Dissatisfaction with


returns from BCTF has led to a new wave of fractionation in the packing sector,” states a July report that sets priorities for the newly created BC Tree Fruits Competitiveness Fund. “Some large growers who believe that the cooperative system protects the weaker growers and penalizes the stronger growers have set up their own packing operations, but these new businesses will continue to lack economies of scale that can be achieved by competing producing districts.”


During his term as CEO,


Swales furthered the work of his predecessor, Alan Tyabji, overseeing upgrades to the co-op’s Winfield


packinghouse and completing sales of co-op property in Naramata. Tyabji’s term ended four


years after he took the helm in November 2012 when Gary Schieck was let go. With 20 years’ experience managing the Oliver packinghouse, Tyabji guided investments in infrastructure aimed at improving efficiency and fruit quality. —Tom Walker/Peter Mitham


Thompson retires from


dairy centre After 20 years at the helm of the University of BC Dairy Education and Research Centre in Agassiz, Jim Thompson has called it a day. Thompson retired as


DERC’s director December 31. Ronaldo Cerri, who has been an associate professor of animal reproduction in the UBC Faculty of Land & Food Systems since 2010, took over as DERC director January 1. Nelson Dinn remains farm manager.


UBC took over the farm


when Agriculture and Agri- food Canada’s last remaining dairy scientist, Lorne Fisher, retired. “Dr. Fisher retired


March 31, 1997, and we started April 1, 1997,” Thompson recalls. Thompson set about


replacing the dilapidated infrastructure, a process he finally completed two years ago with the opening of a 32- bed student residence. Cerri says DERC will continue to focus on animal welfare and dairy reproduction as it has since its inception.


Thompson has been primarily an administrator for the past two decades but Cerri plans to continue his teaching and research efforts as well as administering the centre.


“Building a place is a lot


different than maintaining it,” he says. His first order of business is to complete a long-term land lease with AAFC. AAFC announced about a year ago that it planned to charge DERC market rent for the property. “Our future plans hinge on getting an affordable long- term lease,” Cerri says. Although, there has been


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no resolution yet, Dinn is hopeful. “Having a dairy from a


provincial university on federal land is unique but both parties want to make the relationship work,” Dinn said.


—David Schmidt


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