‘Treat the land right’: B.C. farmers search for solutions as another year of drought looms

By Matt Simmons  Local Journalism Initiative Reporter The lines on Eugen Wittwer’s face are like the rings of a tree — they tell the story of a life lived subject to the whims of weather. Under his salt-and-pepper beard, the Swiss-born farmer keeps a warm smile at the ready. Putting a big glass jug into an old pickup truck outside the farmhouse on his family’s sprawling acreage near the village of Telkwa, B.C., he says he needs to milk his dairy cows. “I like my milk pasture-rized,” he quips. “They’re out in the pasture all day every day.” When severe drought took hold across much of Western Canada last year, many farmers saw their once-green pastures turn to barren brown deserts in a matter of weeks. As extreme heat set…

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