I’m fascinated by farms and farmers, maybe because I come from farmers on both sides on my family — French-Canadian and Ukrainian from different parts of Saskatchewan. (I’ve always treasured the story about how my Uncle Peter (Ukrainian side) made my cousin’s future wife come and pick rocks out of the field in Dysart, so he could see if she met the family standards.)
So this time, I followed back to the land a couple of people who run stands that I’ve bought at in various farmers’ market forays to try to figure out if this urban-farming stuff is some passing yuppie trend or what.
My story in Vancouver magazine is here, where my journeys led me to not just farms, but various people studying B.C. agriculture. The picture I came away with was very different than the one I’d had before, thanks to all these people who love and study farming.
B.C., this incredibly rich growing province, actually exports a huge amount of what it grows and then imports back a whole bunch of other things from various parts of the globe. The diversity of our crops is narrowing, not growing. And it has whacks of unused farmland. I didn’t get to include it in the story, but a recent study of Surrey showed that there is huge potential there for more farming because about a third of its considerable farmland isn’t being used for agriculture.
Mostly what I discovered is that no one has the complete answer yet how to balance growing food locally and taking advantage of the wealth of food available around the globe. But at least there’s a discussion going on, although what impact that discussion will have on corporate food-production systems is still not clear. For all the talk about people wanting local and organic, there’s still an awful lot in distribution centres and supermarkets that isn’t — because shoppers are still buying it.
6 responses so far ↓
1 Michael Kluckner // Oct 3, 2012 at 8:46 am
Interesting that your story should appear in the same week as the province’s promise to replace the Massey Tunnel, which 53 years ago completed the modern highway connection to the USA. In the early 1950s, the Lower Mainland Regional Planning Board preferred the route that eventually (in the 1980s) became Hwy 91/Alex Fraser Bridge, a replacement of the King George Highway; the LMRPB didn’t want Delta’s farmland bisected, but was overruled by the WAC Bennett provincial government, which supported development in Ladner and a new ferry terminal for the infant BC Ferries Corp. at Tsawwassen. This, of course, was a dozen years before the Barrett government launched the Agricultural Land Reserve … sorry for the lengthy history lesson…
So it’s a pleasure to read about young farmers doing high-end crops on that beautiful farmland. I have some sympathy for their grueling work pace, having run a 4-hectare farm on Class 2 farmland in South Langley for a dozen years. We fed ourselves and sold about 300 dozen eggs, 50 meat chickens and 20 lambs a year, plus some vegetables here and there, totally about $5,000 cash income — subsistence farming in the traditional sense! This new generation of farmers have ramped up their production to the point where they can get by (maybe) without the income from a city job, as long as they can by without a new iPhone every six months or so.
2 Raingurl // Oct 3, 2012 at 9:11 am
I’M FOR BARRETT! (sorry, we had that sign in my yard when I was VERY young!) LOL. As for Surrey farmland, they keep taking it away and building those gawd awful monster houses that will clearly crumble when an earthquake hits……..farmland, shmarmland, it took me 7 years of composting pumpkins to get ONE! Yes, one. I have finally arrived, I am growing my own pumpkiN this year and I am quite proud of it.
The earth is crap in the lower mainland. We have demolished it with our plastics and styrofoam waste. Way to go folks!
3 Raingurl // Oct 3, 2012 at 9:13 am
OH! Forgot to mention…..Ever go past all that farm (wste) land in Surrey and notice there is only ONE, (ONE) jiffy john for the WHOLE FARM!? Where do YOU think those guys (and gals) are doing their business?
4 Megan // Oct 3, 2012 at 10:00 am
Lovely article! Today’s the last farmer’s market of the year, but come next spring, you should check out the wednesday market at Surrey Central. It’s better (and cheaper) than anything in Vancouver.
5 Jay // Oct 3, 2012 at 1:55 pm
When we devise a way to produce very cheap electricity, skyscraper farms become viable. Because it can operate 24/7/365 and is stacked, it is far more productive than regular old farmland. Probly won’t need the ALR in 50 years.
6 MB // Oct 4, 2012 at 1:25 pm
Thank you for this great article, Frances.
I was glad to see that the agricultural science types are acknowledging that there are big challenges ahead for imported food from California (and Mexico too, BTW).
Water has been perhaps the most important resource that supported the state’s urban and agricultural development over the past century. It doesn’t have a lot, therefore it imports a great deal from many watersheds in several other states via a huge, complex network of canals and pipes.
Some Californian towns now practice deep conservation and recycling initiatives, some using toilet-to-tap policies that are made possible only with heavily-subsidized tertiary sewage treatment with supplementary purification.
Still, one’s imagination runs amok …
Increasingly exorbitant public subsidies will not prevent the drastic water shortages around the corner as the glaciers in the Sierra Nevadas lose more of their mass, and as the Southwest and Mexico get yet hotter and drier with climate change. As water was the underlying foundation to the economy there, it may betray everyone and become the primary limiting element leading to rationing exports of produce in future, even before peak oil which seems to now be delayed temporarily with the advent of more expensive (but quickly depleted) unconventional oil and gas supplies.
It’s not just Vancouver that imports 90% of its produce primarily from California and Mexico, but every other Canadian city. Once these far away jurisdictions start limiting their exports because of drought and diminished fossil fuels, that will likely be the time when every city that is surrounded by farm land will see the reappearance of local market farms.
Once day Canadians will realize they can become self-sufficient and secure in its own food sources. A 50-km supply chain with only a few links is a helluva lot more secure than a 2,000-km chain with many links. There could be a future in solar-heated greenhouses on the southern prairies where sunshine is most prevelent.
Perhaps Calgary will eventually consider its own “ALR” greenbelt to protect its food supply, but for now they’ll scoff at such outlandish ideas. For now they’ll continue the time-worn practice of undervaluing their adjacent farmland and consider it for only one use: as a support base for subdivisions.
Residents of Yellowknife may scoff now, but some people have already clued in that the high photosynthesis rates created by the midnight summer sun could produce a huge amount of food under glass at a fraction of the price it now pays for veggies grown in the depleted, windblown sand around Fresno, some 3,000 km away.
Here’s to the Canadian orange.
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