This episode, I ask a few of the province's ag sector leaders to reflect on the year we just went through. You'll hear from:

Lana Popham, BC's Agriculture Minister

Peter Mitham, Editor & Writer at Country Life in BC

Julia Smith, ED of Small Scale Meat Producers Association

Casey Prium, Chair of BC Dairy

Theresa Burns, BC's Chief Veterinarian

To submit a voice memo to the show, visit farminginbc.ca/submit

To advertise on the show, visit farminginbc.ca/advertise

This is a bonus episode featuring a segment of my recent interview with BC's Agriculture & Food Minister Lana Popham that won't be included in next week's episode featuring her reflection on the 2025 Farming Year.

Herein, I ask the Minister if Buy BC should get cheeky with our grocery sector oligopoly, whether her ministry plans to address the massive water license application backlog, and why Farm Status on ALR land is so easy to obtain.

In this segment, we reference the 2025 Premier's Task Force on Agriculture & Food Economy, which recently completed its work and released its recommendations.

Early this year I recruited 14 farming professionals from around BC to send me updates all year, with the hopes of turning it to some sort of Farming in BC Yearbook. Here, you'll here part one of a multi-episode series to close out the year.

This time, you'll hear a summary of the 2025 farming season as a series of messages sent to me by project participants.

You can contribute your own farm summary, or a good 2025 farming anecdote, by visiting farminginbc.ca/submit

Early this year I recruited 14 farming professionals from around BC to send me updates all year, with the hopes of turning it to some sort of Farming in BC Yearbook. Here, you'll here part one of a multi-episode series to close out the year.

This time, you'll meet the project's participants and hear about their goals and their anxieties heading into the 2025 season.

You can contribute your own farm summary, or a good 2025 farming anecdote, by visiting farminginbc.ca/submit

This show: Saltspring Island Farmer & author Abey Scaglione joins me to discuss her new book, Radical Farm, which argues that animals are essential to ensure the health of our soil, ourselves, and our food system.

Then: did the BC Agriculture Council go to Victoria to ask that our Ag sector be deemed an essential service? Yes! Also, no! BCAC Executive Director Danielle Synotte joins me to explain.

This is a rebroadcast of an episode of my original show, The Ruminant, from 2019 or so. New episodes coming soon!

Special thanks to Kirk Smith for recording this episode with me.

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 [email protected]

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.