Anticipated drought, winter cold snap weigh heavily on Kamloops-area food production

KAMLOOPS – BC’s agriculture industry has been heavily impacted by the recent years of extreme weather conditions.

While many in the industry are preparing for another year of drought, Eden Mackay, food sovereignty coordinator with the Kamloops Food Policy Council, says that may not be the only setback for local food production.

“There’s all sorts of different challenges this year. We probably won’t have any stone fruit due to the fact that we’ve got a really bad cold snap after things were so warm for so long,” said Mackay. “[We have seen] increased past cycles, which has been really tough on people who are trying to grow organically, especially.”

All of these setbacks may mean less locally grown produce in store this summer.

While options for local fruit may be scarce, Mackay says there will still be an abundance of food grown in Kamloops.

“Something that I hear from people is, ‘I have too much, like it’s just such a problem. Every time I try to garden, I just grow so many tomatoes and it’s just like, I can’t handle these tomatoes.’ Well, is that an issue or is that a solution? Because that sounds like a solution to me, right?,” said Mackay.

“That’s something that we can be incorporating into a sharing economy where we can just be giving our neighbours all of our excess vegetables and sharing with each other and preparing meals to share with each other — supporting each other in whatever way we can.”