Alberta and B.C. farmers encouraged to dispose of obsolete pesticides and medications

Sep 22, 2016

Collections are running until September 23

By Diego Flammini
Assistant Editor, North American Content
Farms.com

Farmers in Alberta and British Columbia are encouraged to bring obsolete pesticides and medications to collection sites for safe disposal.

The free program is put on by CleanFarms, in partnership with the Canadian Animal Health Institute and CropLife Canada.

According to CleanFarms, since the program’s inception in 1998, more than two million kilograms of obsolete pesticides have been collected and disposed of.

CleanFarms

Approximately 40,000 kilograms can be attributed to farmers from Alberta’s Peace Region.

"Alberta farmers are environmentally conscious and are pleased to partner with CleanFARMS to safely dispose of obsolete pesticides and livestock medications," said Shannon Scofield, executive director of the Alberta Federation of Agriculture, in a release. "The CleanFARMS collection program provides an excellent one-stop service for Alberta farmers to continue to protect the land."

Farmers have until Friday to dispose of their pesticides and medications at the following locations:

Thursday, September 22
- Richardson Pioneer in Dawson Creek, BC
- Richardson Pioneer in Manning, AB

Friday, September 23
- UFA in Fairview, AB
- Crop Production Services in High Prairie, AB

The locations are open from 9 a.m. to 4 p.m.

Video: Cleaning Sheep Barns & Setting Up Chutes

Indoor sheep farming in winter at pre-lambing time requires that, at Ewetopia Farms, we need to clean out the barns and manure in order to keep the sheep pens clean, dry and fresh for the pregnant ewes to stay healthy while indoors in confinement. In today’s vlog, we put fresh bedding into all of the barns and we remove manure from the first groups of ewes due to lamb so that they are all ready for lambs being born in the next few days. Also, in preparation for lambing, we moved one of the sorting chutes to the Coveralls with the replacement ewe lambs. This allows us to do sorting and vaccines more easily with them while the barnyard is snow covered and hard to move sheep safely around in. Additionally, it frees up space for the second groups of pregnant ewes where the chute was initially.