A day before the March 15 deadline the BC Court of Appeal set for a decision on the future of the Vancouver Island Rail Corridor (previously the Esquimalt & Nanaimo Railway), the province announced $18 million towards planning and a recognition of First Nations interests in the corridor. “Any potential future use of the corridor, …
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Filling a market for fresh corn in Chase
CHASE – Who hasn’t tucked into a cob of sweet, juicy corn during a warm summer harvest? It was even better if you could buy it at a roadside stand, freshly picked and direct from the farmer. Many such memories began in the Village of Chase, on the shores of Little Shuswap Lake in the …
AI response in spotlight
BC’s poultry sector gathered as a whole for the first time since 2020 after three years of pandemic-related restrictions and uncertainties. But another pandemic was in the spotlight at the March 2-3 conference, with highly pathogenic avian influenza figuring into the annual reports of all sector groups and the educational sessions. Any way you slice …
New funding on track
The federal government is now accepting applications for a suite of programs that will be funded under the five-year Sustainable Canadian Agriculture Partnership, which succeeds the current agricultural policy framework on April 1. The funded programs include AgriAssurance, AgriCompetitiveness, AgriDiversity, AgriInnovate, AgriMarketing and AgriScience and are part of a $1 billion slice of the new …
Food security funding welcomed
While the provincial budget has yet to be receive approval in the legislature, the province is wasting no time in rolling out announcements related to its spending plans. This week saw Premier David Eby and agriculture minister Pam Alexis join with social development minister Sheila Malcolmson and industry representatives in Vancouver to announce more than …
Butcher hub moves ahead after three years
ROCK CREEK – A planned food hub in the Kootenay Boundary region could be a reality this fall after three years of planning, supporting local meat processing capacity in the southern Interior. “There have been a lot of changes since we first began discussions in the spring of 2020,” says Vicki Gee, who was formerly …