Farners voice concerns about B.C. time policy

 

Some British Columbia’s farmers face challenges because the province has adopted year-round Daylight Saving Time.

Peter Mithlin who reports for Country Life in B,C, farm newspaper said it will delay the start of work on many farms because it will still be dark up until 9:30 in southern parts of the province,

It will also put the province out of synch with customers and suppliers in Oregon and Washington State and will disrupt some companies with operations on both sides of the Canadian border with the United States.

The BC Landscape and Nursery Association (BCLNA)plans to join with other organizations to lobby the government to reconsider its move.

“There was very little consultation before this announcement was made,” BCLNA said in a newsletter to members this month.

Reduced visibility is always an issue in winter, and those issues will be exacerbated by the time change, it said.

The Greater Vancouver Board of Trade (GVBOT) and other business groups have spoken out against BC’s unilateral move, noting that just 19 per cent of respondents to a 2019 provincial consultation favoured going solo on the change. Government at the time promised to wait until neighbouring jurisdictions agreed to move, “to avoid any economic disruption and disadvantage.”create an additional headache for businesses operating on both sides of the border,” GVBOT president and CEO Bridgitte Anderson says.

While the provincial consultation found that 92 per cent of farmers favoured a permanent shift to Daylight Saving Time, Jack Bates of Tecarte Farms in Delta told Country Life in BC at the time he was ambivalent.

People will work with the light they’ve got, he noted, and the livestock wouldn’t care. But safety could be an issue, particularly with longer hours of darkness in the morning.

“On those dark, dreary days in December and into January, it might not be light until 9:30, so it might be dark when kids are going to school. It might be a safety issue,” he said. “There’s a reason why it changed, and everyone’s forgotten that.”

Purdue fails to quash grower lawsuit

 Purdue Farms has once again failed to quash a lawsuit filed by two North Carolina ohicken contract growers’ who allege the company retaliated against them for their role in crtitizing the company.

The way chicken processors deal with contract growers has been the subject of many criticisms including documentary films such as Morgan 

Spurlock’s Super Sizer Me 2.

The federal judge rejected Perdue Farms’ constitutional challenge to Labor Department whistleblower proceedings 

Judge Louise Flanagan dismissed Perdue’s claims in closely related cases involving Fairmont-area growers Craig Watts and Rudy Howell. The ruling came more than a year after a judge denied Perdue’s requests for preliminary injunctions.

Watts and Howell had filed whistleblower complaints alleging Perdue retaliated against them after they raised public concerns about the company’s poultry growing practices. Watts’ complaint stemmed from actions taken after he publicized animal welfare concerns in 2014, while Howell’s case followed the termination of his grower contract in 2020 after he invited advocates to observe and film conditions on his farm.

Perdue had sought to block the Labor Department’s administrative proceedings, arguing they violated multiple constitutional provisions, including the Seventh Amendment and Articles I, II and III of the Constitution, as well as the Fifth Amendment.

Flanagan rejected those arguments, ruling that most of Perdue’s claims failed on the merits. She dismissed one claim and parts of another without prejudice for lack of standing, but otherwise sided with the Labor Department and the growers.

The judge said the Food Safety Modernization Act’s whistleblower process did not violate Perdue’s jury trial rights and that the company had not shown compensable harm from the administrative law judge removal protections it challenged. She also found Perdue lacked standing to pursue some of its due process and nondelegation arguments.

The order granted summary judgment motions filed by Watts, Howell and federal defendants, denied Perdue’s summary judgment motions and directed the clerk to close both federal court cases.

The decision left the underlying Labor Department whistleblower proceedings intact.

Purdue Farms is a family-owned business.

One rabid bat in February

 

Out of 105 samples submitted, one bat tested positive for rabies in Ontario in February.

It is the first case of rabies in the province so far this year.

Canada-wide there have been nine cases, six of them raccoons in Quebec and three bats with one each for Quebec, Ontario and Saskatchewan.

Chicken hearing cancelled

 

The appeal Maple Leaf Foods Inc. filed against the Chicken Farmers of Ontario marketing board has been cancelled.

No reason for the appeal or the cancellation is included in the notice from the Ontario Ministry of Agriculture, Food and Rural Affairs Appeals Tribunal.

The appeal has been on the docket since last fall.

Grain elevator converting to fertilizer

V6 Agronomy is converting the grain elevator at Johnstown to handle specialty fertilizer imports.

The site is on the St. Lawrence River Seaway about 100 kilometers south of Ottawa.

Much of the fertilizer will be loaded on trains to haul it to Western Canada. It will also serve Eastern Ontario by truck and some U.S. markets.

V6 is a Canadian developer of compound and specialty fertilizers. The company was founded in 2012 and has been operating an inland fertilizer terminal in Wilcox, Sask., since 2020.

The converted elevator will be called the Odyssey Terminal. It is owned by Edwardsburgh Cardinal Township..

The first phase of development features a 20,000-tonne fertilizer storage building that can accommodate a full Handysize bulk carrier vessel.

Global food prices up

 

Global food prices crept up last month, reported the United Nation’s Food and Agriculture Organization.

It’s index rose by nine-tenths of one per cent to stand at 125.3 points, ending five months of declines.

Vegetable oil prices jumped, and meat and cereals rose, outweighing declines in quotes for dairy and sugar. 

Overall food prices are one per cent lower than a year ago and 21.8 per cent below the March 2022 peak.

Tobacco growers in for a windfall

 

Tobacco growers could be in for a windfall from the national tobacco settlement of $32.5 billion last March.

The Ontario Farm Products Marketing Council has posted a notice that it intends to make the Ontario Flue-Cured Tobacco Growers Marketing Board responsible to getting the money to qualified growers. 

The public has until April 20 to comment on the proposal.

The notice does not say how much money to board will receive for distribution to growers.