By Alice McFarlane

Agriculture Roundup for Tuesday, November 22, 2022

Nov 22, 2022 | 2:19 PM

MELFORT, Sask. – Prairie grain movement to port has slowed down in recent weeks, due to ongoing rain delaying unloading at the Port of Vancouver.

David Prezednowek with CN Rail said deliveries were at 626,000 metric tonnes in Week 15, which ended Nov. 12, down from 809,000 metric tonnes in Week 12.

He said shutting down one part of the supply chain affects the entire grain movement system.

Fortunately, there has not been an extended period of cold weather so far this fall, which slows down the speed trains can travel.

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Seven commercial poultry farms in British Columbia’s Fraser Valley have been quarantined because they’ve tested positive for a highly infectious avian flu.

A statement from the B.C. Ministry of Agriculture said the farms tested positive between Nov. 16 and Nov. 19.

Six of the farms are in Abbotsford and one is in Chilliwack, in the Fraser Valley, the same area where more than 17 million birds were culled in 2004 when avian flu swept through numerous farms.

The ministry said producers within a 10-kilometre radius have been notified and all infected farms have been placed under quarantine by the Canadian Food Inspection Agency.

There have been three dozen cases of avian flu in the province since the first confirmation of the virus in April. B.C.’s chief veterinarian issued an order in September requiring all quota-holding poultry operations to maintain indoor operations.

Experts have said the current strain affecting poultry operations, H5N1, behaves differently than other infections and instead of remaining isolated in one area it has spread across the country.

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Potato farmers in Prince Edward Island are feeling the impact of lost customers one year after table potato shipments to the United States were banned for four months.

Canada stopped sending the island’s best-known export to the U.S. on Nov. 21, 2021, after potato wart fungus, a disease that disfigures potatoes, had been detected in a few fields on the island.

Shipments resumed in April after the U.S. Department of Agriculture gave the all-clear for Island farms to resume exports to that country.

But for farmers like Andrew Smith whose property in Newton, P.E.I., produces potatoes for chips, the loss of long-term customers in the United States has had lasting consequences.

He said he lost a contract worth hundreds of thousands of dollars with a large U.S. company that changed suppliers during the export ban.

Smith said he’s worried by renewed lobbying efforts from the U.S.-based National Potato Council, which is calling for more stringent packing requirements for P.E.I. exports.

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alice.mcfarlane@pattisonmedia.com

On Twitter: @farmnewsNOW