DATE: January 16LOCATION: United Counties of Prescott and RussellDETAILS: OMAFRA is reporting that a chicken from a mixed flock of 100 birds has tested positive for Infectious Laryngotracheitis (ILT). Poultry producers, small flock growers and service providers are urged to maintain enhanced biosecurity in the United Counties of Prescott Russell north of Hwy 417.SOURCE: www.fbcc.ca

The goal of any broiler breeder program is to produce the greatest number of hatching eggs per hen housed and life of flock hatch to give us the most chicks per hen housed.

Maggie Van Camp is the new National Agricultural Practice Development Leader for BDO Canada, based out of the Guelph, Ont. office. Van Camp comes to BDO with decades of experience in agricultural publishing — most recently, 11 years as Senior Business Editor with Country Guide. She has developed a reputation for integrity, consistently sourcing practical business information for farmers and strategically identifying paramount issues for the agricultural industry."As Canadian farms and agri-businesses get more complex, they need better, more in-depth professional services and financial advice," says Van Camp. “BDO's accountants are smart, skilled, and passionate about agriculture. It's a perfect fit.""As National Agriculture Group Industry Leader, I am so excited about Maggie joining our team. Her vast agricultural knowledge and experience will enhance the level of service we are able to provide our agricultural clients,” says BDO Partner Mark Verwey. Van Camp is also CEO and owner of Redcrest Farms, a broiler farm near Blackstock, Ont. Prior to farming, she lived and worked in Alberta, Saskatchewan, Manitoba, and Southwestern Ontario. Van Camp is a director for the Eastern Canadian Farm Writers Association. She was previously a 4-H leader and on the county board executive, and she has volunteered at her local fair and church.

More than half the food produced in Canada is wasted and the average kitchen tosses out hundreds of dollars worth of edibles every year, says a study researchers are calling the first of its kind.''It's a lot of food,'' said Lori Nikkel of Second Harvest, the Toronto-based group working to reduce food waste that commissioned the study.''We waste more food than we consume.''The study released Thursday is the world's first to measure food waste using data from industry and other sources instead of estimates, said Martin Gooch of Value Chain Management International, which conducted the study.Value Chain works with agriculture, aquaculture, marine and food industries to make them more profitable.''What we did was actually go to industry and (said), 'Give us primary data,''' Gooch said. ''This is the first time anywhere in the world that anyone's gone out and got primary data that connects production with consumers.''Results were checked with industry experts.''At every point in the process, we ground-truthed it,'' said Gooch. ''We're confident our results are conservative.''Previous work has suggested that Canadians waste almost 400 kilograms of food per person, one of the world's highest totals. The new work adds considerable detail to that figure.Apples rot in the grass for lack of harvest workers. Surplus milk is flushed. Thousands of hectares of produce are plowed after cancelled orders.The report, funded largely by the Walmart Foundation, concludes 58 per cent of Canadian food production is wasted.That includes unavoidable waste such as animal bones. But a solid one-third of the waste _ more than 11 million tonnes _ could be recovered.The report says the value of usable groceries that wind up in landfills or other disposal sites is almost $50 billion. That's more than half the amount Canadians spend on food every year and is enough to feed every Canadian for five months.As well, it says avoidable food waste in Canada produces more than 22 million tonnes of climate-changing carbon dioxide emissions.The report says processing and manufacturing are the largest sources of avoidable waste, accounting for 43 per cent of it. Produce that doesn't meet exacting grading standards, inaccurate market forecasts and inefficient processes are all part of the problem.So are date codes which remove perfectly healthy food from the market.''Best-before doesn't mean awful-after,'' said Nikkel.Canadian kitchens are also conspicuous wastrels, responsible for 21 per cent of avoidable waste. That's about $1,700 per household in a country in which four million people struggle for regular meals.Hospitals, restaurants and institutions contribute 13 per cent of avoidable food waste. Retail outlets are close behind at 12 per cent.Farmers waste only six per cent of the usable food they produce. Distributors waste even less at five per cent.The report details many ways waste could be cut. Better co-ordination between farmer and processor, changes to crop insurance, clearer date codes, improved safety assessments for donated food and liability reform could all help keep nutrition out of the garbage and on somebody's plate.Even avoiding bulk buys that result in excess being tossed away would help, said Nikkel.Canadians should change their attitude toward food, she added.''We've cheapened it so much that it doesn't have value any more. It would horrify our grandparents.''We need to go back to that valuing of food.''

The federal government says it plans to spend $1.75 billion by March without having said what the money is for, though at least some of the cash is likely to go to farmers hurt by new trade deals.The government remains tight-lipped about how it will use the rest of the ''non-announced'' spending it allowed for in last week's fall economic statement.In all, the government has made room for $9.5 billion worth of still-to-be-unveiled commitments over the next six years.A government source says some of that will go to dairy, egg and poultry producers, whose protected domestic markets were opened up to more foreign competition under new North American and Pacific Rim trade deals. The source, who was not authorized to discuss the matter publicly, spoke on condition of anonymity.The fall statement said the government is still talking with farmers and processors about compensation for the new United States-Mexico-Canada Agreement (USMCA) and the recently ratified Asia-Pacific trade pact known as the Comprehensive and Progressive Agreement for Trans-Pacific Partnership (CPTPP).The negotiations will determine the size of the final package and how the money will be rolled out over the coming years.In 2016, the Liberal government dedicated $350 million to help dairy producers deal with the impacts of Canada's trade agreement with the European Union. The amount included a five-year, $250-million fund for milk producers and a second program worth $100 million for cheese-makers.The Liberals also have outstanding mandate commitments they will be looking to address before the 2019 election campaign and, looking further ahead, Ottawa is facing litigation related to Indigenous issues, including land claims. Both could draw on some of the money.Most of the yet-to-be announced funding has been dedicated to the later years of the projection, with $2.1 billion set aside for 2021-22, $1.85 billion for 2022-23 and nearly $2.8 billion for 2023-24.One possible use for the cash: national pharmacare.The governing Liberals have put together a group of advisers to consult Canadians and to explore options for a national program. The council is due to report in 2019, when the topic of pharmacare is likely to become an issue during the election campaign.A spokesman for Finance Minister Bill Morneau argued the list of the government's funding commitments in the fall update is comprehensive.But Pierre-Olivier Herbert noted some measures cannot be disclosed yet due to cabinet confidentiality or because ministers have yet to make decisions. Issues of national security, commercial sensitivity, litigation or certain matters related to trade agreements must also be kept under wraps, he said.''The net fiscal impact of these confidential or sensitive measures is rolled up and presented at an aggregate level and will be detailed in due time,'' Herbert wrote in an email.Thanks to the stronger economy, Morneau had more than $20 billion in extra fiscal room over the coming years to work with, compared to the forecasts in last February's budget.He chose to announce new initiatives – including billions of dollars worth of tax incentives for corporate Canada – that will use up all that space and then some, contributing to slightly larger annual deficits beginning next year.The document contained Ottawa's long-awaited plan to help the country compete with the U.S. for investment dollars. It came in response to major American tax and regulatory reforms that many in the business community warn have eliminated Canada's edge as an investment destination.The package includes new write-offs that are expected to lower federal revenues by about $14 billion over the next half-decade all by themselves.Peter DeVries, a former senior Finance Department official, said Morneau has now made spending commitments of nearly $33 billion over six years since the February budget. In comparison, he said the budget itself contained $20.3 billion worth of new measures, although the initiatives were aimed at a much-broader range of issues.''There's some big numbers in there,'' said DeVries, who writes articles about government finances and recently examined the fall statement.The next budget will serve as the Liberals' election platform, but DeVries wonders how the party will finance it.''Where are you going to find the money for that platform, unless you go into deficit even more or unless you believe that you've put aside sufficient reserves in the framework to manage it?'' he said. ''It doesn't look like they've done that, except for that one line that says (non-announced measures).''The fall update also contains no timeline to eliminate the Liberals' shortfalls, which are now projected to be higher than $18 billion in each of the next couple of years.The opposition Conservatives and some economists have criticized the Liberals for not providing a date to balance the budget. There are warnings the government could face big fiscal challenges when the next economic downturn arrives.After the 2015 election, the Trudeau government abandoned vows to run yearly shortfalls of no more than $10 billion and to balance the books by 2019.Instead, it has focused on reducing the net debt-to-GDP ratio – a measure of how burdensome the national debt is – each year.