Federal and provincial funding has been pledged to top up a program to control codling moth in British Columbia’s fruit-growing regions, and back other B.C. fruit marketing and capital projects.
The federal and B.C. governments on Friday pledged $3 million and $2 million respectively for three separate programs backing the tree fruit sector.
“In our discussions, the industry identified some areas, such as marketing and infrastructure, where they wanted to focus efforts and make further improvements,” provincial Agriculture Minister Steve Thomson said in a release.
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The combined funding will be used for “new environmentally-friendly packing and storage infrastructure” as well as “marketing opportunities that raise the profile of fresh and processed apples.”
It will also go to build on work already accomplished by the sterile insect release (SIR) program in the Okanagan and Kootenays, the governments said.
Sterilize and release
The SIR program is billed as an area-wide and environmentally friendly approach to managing the codling moth, considered to be one of the tree fruit industry’s most damaging and costly pests.
The program supports the raising and sterilizing of codling moths using gamma radiation, then releasing them weekly into orchards during the growing season.
For the program to operate successfully, the sterile moth population must overwhelm the wild, fertile population, so wild moths mate more often with sterile moths, producing infertile eggs and reducing codling moth populations overall.
The program, which costs just over $3 million a year, operates in the fruit-growing areas of the Okanagan, Similkameen and Shuswap valleys. The costs are paid largely by general property taxpayers, as a portion of their annual tax bills, and by commercial apple and pear growers, through parcel taxes levied on a per-acre basis.
According to the program’s website, senior governments’ funding for the SIR program last ran out in 2007.
The federal/provincial AgriFlexibility fund, budgeted for $500 million from 2009 to 2014, is meant to back initiatives that improve the ag sector’s competitiveness and help it adapt to pressures through “non-business risk management measures.”
One of its stated goals is to help “improve environmental sustainability for the sector.”
