4 The old normal


The season is changing in the Okanagan. Months of snow are receding out in the field, revealing long-buried equipment. Spring is around the corner. But the climate is also changing or, at the very least, becoming more variable and prone to extremes. While things used to happen in due season, now the seasons are sometimes past due, or too early. Romantic notions of living in harmony with nature are tough to swallow in the face of crop losses. Mother Nature doesn’t seem to care too much about living in harmony with us. Growers in the Fraser Valley might see March come in like a lamb while others experience a lion; it’s not often that the two settle down in a golden age of peace and harmony. And chances are, they never did. The hard business of farming leaves little room to long after a time when


the weather was fine and the crops better. Grain growers are often said to live in “next-year country” because disappointment is a frequent companion, but most of us only have today and a stack of bills waiting to be paid. Too often, next year is too far away. This is where business risk management programs are important, a point fruit growers are making to government as early returns from the 2019 crop point to disaster. Ranchers have been extended a tax deferral provision, too, as yet another year of drought triggers government assistance. Actions around climate change and extreme weather are predicated on the belief that it isn’t normal. And, since it isn’t normal, it’s a risk that needs to be addressed because it threatens our survival. This is where adaptation strategies come into play, helping growers prepare for what lies beyond their control. But has there ever been a normal year, except perhaps in hindsight? Now, don’t get us wrong: There’s indisputable evidence of significant changes since the 1980s. Data for average temperatures and atmospheric carbon dioxide are at historical (and historic) highs. We’re in uncharted territory. Yet, in a very practical sense, every year is uncharted territory for farmers. It’s only with diligent record-keeping that we can anticipate what the future might


COUNTRY LIFE IN BC • MARCH 2020


hold, something agri-tech’s use of big data is taking to new levels. But spring, whatever it looks like this year, is also cause for hope. The earth will turn again to the sun, and we’ll have a new variation of summer weather to deal with. We’ll collect data and analyze it for whatever it can tell us about how the season is evolving and how we can be better prepared in future. Spring is a time of new beginnings, a season when all those winter


workshops get put to the test. And then we look back, and do it all over again.


Biosecurity no stranger to Canadian farmers


On a spring Sunday in 1919, Presbyterian church parishioners in Cloudslee, Ontario tarried after the morning service to visit one another. Among them was my grandfather, who talked and joked with his best friend. By the following Sunday, his friend was dead and


The Back Forty BOB COLLINS


buried: one of more than 30,000 Canadians who died in the influenza pandemic of 1918-19, commonly known as the Spanish flu. Listening to my grandfather tell the story 40 years


later, I could tell he still couldn’t comprehend how a perfectly healthy 20-year-old could die so suddenly. But it was the young and robust, typically the most resistant, who were most lethally susceptible to the Spanish flu virus later identified as a strain of H1N1. Canada has been affected by five influenza pandemics since Confederation: 1890 Russian flu, 1918-19 Spanish flu, 1957 Asian flu, 1968 Hong Kong flu and the 2009 swine flu, another H1N1 strain like that of 1918-19. Influenza fatality statistics are highly variable,


often based on estimates or computer models. The 1918-19 flu is claimed to have killed between 20 million and 100 million people worldwide. Seasonal flu deaths in Canada are pegged at


between 2,000 and 8,000 each year. The wide discrepancy arises from differing statistical analysis and applying estimates to holes in the data. Many


victims die from a combination of infections. The H1N1 strain of 1918-19 destroyed immune systems and cleared the way for rapidly fatal pneumonia. In 2003, Severe Acute Respiratory Syndrome (SARS), caused by a coronavirus, emerged as the first serious infectious disease of the 21st-century. SARS-CoV was known to cause serious outbreaks in animals but was not considered particularly dangerous to humans. It is now believed an animal strain mutated and became infectious to, and between, humans. SARS originated in Guangdong, China in late 2002 and appeared in Canada in March 2003. It was highly infectious and the 438 identified cases in Canada led to 44 deaths. There have been 8,096 cases worldwide and 774 fatalities In 2012, Middle East Respiratory Syndrome


(MERS-CoV) emerged in Saudi Arabia. MERS-CoV is believed to have mutated and made the leap from camels to humans. MERS has been identified in 27 countries and 2,494 laboratory confirmed cases have been associated with 858 deaths. What is remarkable about the combined SARS and MERS outbreaks is that they have been so effectively contained. While every death is tragic, the odds of contracting and dying from either disease have been miniscule. But a new coronavirus that surfaced in Wuhan, China in late 2019 (COVID-19) is spreading much more rapidly than SARS or MERS. In a month and a half, COVID-19 spread to 30 countries; as this paper went to press, there were more than 80,000 known cases and 2,500 deaths. The new strain is thought to have originated in bats but is now highly contagious between humans. The initial statistics


Publisher Cathy Glover


The agricultural news source in British Columbia since 1915 Vol.106 No. 3 . MARCH 2020


Published monthly by Country Life 2000 Ltd. www.countrylifeinbc.com


604-328-3814 . publisher@countrylifeinbc.com Editor Emeritus David Schmidt 604-793-9193 . davidschmidt@shaw.ca Associate Editor Peter Mitham news@countrylifeinbc.com


Advertising Sales & Marketing Cathy Glover sales@countrylifeinbc.com Production Designer Tina Rezansoff Welcome spring, PW!


suggest a mortality rate of 2% but the World Health Organization warns there is insufficient data to make an accurate estimate. The real worry is the rapid spread and the apparent ease of transmission – two of the hallmarks of the Spanish flu epidemic. The world has changed in the hundred years


between the Spanish flu and COVID-19. The population has grown four-fold and it is now commonplace for people to travel halfway around the world in a matter of hours. Health science and medical infrastructure have grown from unimaginable to commonplace. The four-mile round trip to church was often the sum of my grandfather’s weekly travel; it would be a fraction of most people’s daily total now. A hundred years ago there was no cure for the Spanish flu. The response on the farm in Cloudslee was to keep the kids home from school, avoid the company of others, and do your Sunday praying from home. Isolation would have been the obvious response, especially for most of the population that lived on farms and ranches. That’s less likely now, when more than 80% of Canadians live in a city, shopping and commuting daily. So far, there is no cure for COVID-19 and health officials talk about the window of opportunity to control its spread. Thus far, the response seems to be isolation after infection. Anyone in the livestock or poultry community


will recognize how this could turn out. Hopefully, not like it did a hundred years ago. Bob Collins raises beef cattle and grows produce on his farm in the Alberni Valley.


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