Anna Helmer I used to write a small weekly column for the local paper, telling stories about the farm each week. I kept it going through the busy times and the not busy times. I hardly remember how I managed to write the required 600 coherent words during those intensely busy summer weeks. Maybe they… Keep Reading
Gayle Palas Consumer opinion can make or break a brand. The recent surge in awareness around food waste, the climate crisis, and ocean pollution has increased anti-plastic sentiments and triggered campaigns to remove single use plastic from our communities. Naturally this has extended to food packaging where the impact of consumer perspective is starting to… Keep Reading
Community Food Analysis Laboratories Ron Wasik and Carmen Wakeling The Small Scale Food Processors Association (SSFPA) is a national trade association of processors, growers and suppliers of food and agricultural products which aims to help its members grow their businesses and expand local economies. A 2016 survey by the SSFPA revealed that there was a… Keep Reading
Meagan Curtis During the first decades of the 20th century in rural Vancouver Island, horses were used for farm work and personal transportation. It seemed everyone had a horse of some kind. Horses co-harvested the hay and grain that would feed and warm them through a cold rainy winter after these crops were cut by… Keep Reading
How Geothermal Systems May Help Organic Greenhouse Management This article originally appeared in Organic Science Canada magazine, Issue 1, 2018, as part of Organic Science Cluster II (OSCII), a national research and development endeavour led by the Organic Federation of Canada and the Organic Agriculture Centre of Canada at Dalhousie University OSCII with funding provided by Agriculture and… Keep Reading
Anna Helmer Hello and welcome once again to The Biodynamic Farming Experience for the Celestially-Challenged: a partly-formed, poorly-articulated, and over-hyphenated chronicle of a particular journey in which a woman-farmer-of-a-certain-age-and-experience (me) delves into the theory and, more importantly, the practice of Biodynamic farming in search of fun and the future of farming. Rambling along here, aren’t… Keep Reading
Crop-Livestock Integration at Green Fire Farm DeLisa Lewis, PhD What do the North American Dust Bowl of the 1930s and the current global experiences of climate change have in common? Of course, both are understood as environmental disasters with humans as major contributors. But, if you answered with either ‘farmers’ or ‘soils,’ or more ideally,… Keep Reading
Three case studies examine soil management practices in the face of climate change By Rachel Penner, BC Agriculture & Food Climate Action Initiative Improving soil health is one way producers can increase the resilience of their operations in the face of climate change. The BC Agriculture & Food Climate Action Initiative (CAI) has supported multiple… Keep Reading
Anna Helmer Would you mind if we talked about Biodynamic farming? There. That’s how you keep your readership small. Those of you still with me have fought through eye-glaze and eye-roll and have resisted page turn. You will notice that even I am struggling a bit to stay on topic, and if only you could… Keep Reading
Lennea Durant A solid health and safety program is important for any agriculture business, but workplace safety doesn’t always come naturally. Often safety practices are implemented after the fact, once a worker has been injured. There are over 26,000 agricultural workers in British Columbia and 550 organic farms operating in the province.(1) Between 2013 and… Keep Reading
