This ep: My guest on the show today is Katie Sardinha, an orchardist who runs Kaleidoscope Fruit Ranch based in Summerland. Katie wrote an op-ed in the August issue of Country Life in BC focused on the grocery oligopoly in Canada and the problem this poses for farmers. Katie thinks it’s a big problem, actually. Or not even ‘a’ big problem, but ‘the’ mother problem. I wanted to ask her to expand on what she meant, so I asked her for an interview.

My guest today is Abra Brynne. Abra’s not a farmer, but she comes from farmers, and early in her career she turned her passion for place-based food systems into a career dedicated to advocating and agitating for changes that would strengthen those systems. I’ve sat on a board or two with Abra, and I’ve chatted with her at various farming-related events over the last couple of years, and she is an Interesting Person, and so I’ve known for a while I wanted to interview her for the show.

We talk about Abra's Ph.D research on decolonizing farmland. If you want to contact her about that, email Abra at abra.brynne@dal.ca

Today on the show, I bring you some tales from some farmers in the trenches of BC food and beverage regulation. First you’re going to hear from one of the recipients of new milk production quota under BC’s supply management system. After that, an Okanagan winemaker expresses concerns about the potential extension of the exemptions that allowed a battered wine sector to make BC wine from non-BC grapes in 2024.

This episode you’re going to hear my conversation with Julio Senties, a migrant farmworker from Mexico who has been coming to BC for seasonal work since 2017. In recent years Julio has been returning to Carcajou Fruit Company, a farm in Summerland that grows cherries, mainly for export. I interviewed one of Carcajou’s owners, Erin Carlson, for a couple stories for CBC radio a couple of years ago, and during my reporting she had connected me with Julio over email. Recently I invited Julio to sit down with me to share his perspective, and he accepted. So I went out to his farm in Summerland and recorded this interview.

My guests on the show today are Rebecca Kneen and Bryan MacIsaac of Left Fields Organic Farm in Sorrento. Their ten acre farm is a diversified operation that includes hops, veggie gardens, poultry and sheep. Until very recently, Left Fields was not the only business running on the property, though. Bryan and Rebecca were the founders of Crannog Ales, an on-farm craft brewery they founded in January 2000, back when there were just a handful of craft breweries in the whole province. If you’ve ever enjoyed a pint of Crannog’s Backhand of God Stout or its Potato Ale you already know about the outstanding beer that was made at this little farm brewery for 25 years.

What you’re going to hear is a wide-ranging conversation with two people who have always farmed and brewed with a devotion to quality and equality and with a hell of a lot of integrity. And along the way you’ll hear some fun opinions.

This episode: updates from around the province, including a smattering of the kinds of complaints some of you have received while working in the ag sector.

This episode: a conversation about agrivoltaics--the integration of solar power generation with food production--with guest Omri Haven, who believes agrivoltaics can and should play an important role in energy generation in BC in the coming years.

Reach out to Omri on Linkedin or email him.

Youtube explainer on agrivoltaics referenced in the episode: https://youtu.be/lgZBlD-TCFE?si=IQMdRs9NdUx8izOR

This episode, an interview with Helen Schwantje. Helen was the Wildlife Veterinarian for British Columbia from 1992 to 2021. To this day she continues as an emeritus and conducts contract work for government and NGOs on a variety of wildlife health issues. Helen has spent a lot of her career focused on the health of BC’s wild sheep herds, and she joined me to talk about the relationship between a specific virus, the domesticated sheep that carry it, and the wild sheep populations that are under threat because of it. And how she hopes to see more action by our governments and by farmers to do what’s necessary to contain this threat.

I’ll also be sharing some updates from our colleagues in the BC farming sector in the middle segment.

Links:

Transmission, the full length documentary about MOVI and its effect on wild sheep.

Wild Sheep Society of BC

A Helen Schwantje bio from the web

This recent interview with Helen provides a broader perspective on her career.