[getsmart-l] "we need farmers working the land"

[John O'Gorman]

"We've have created an almost a perfect storm scenario, where young people who no longer are exposed to farming in their family, are also not exposed to anything about their food system in the schools. "

Farm Trends 
Greenspace is great. BUT IT IS NOT FARMLAND!
SMALL FARM CANADA· MAY/JUNE 2007
Brent Warner

?I believe we need farmland now and forever. I also believe the only way we will ever preserve farmland is to keep it farming and that means we need farmers working the land. 

Residential pressure on the best farmland in Canada (in proximity to major urban areas such as the Fraser Valley in BC and the Niagara Escarpment in Ontario) is pushing the prices of this land out of the market for farming. I have been in this business for over 30 years and I can unequivocally tell you that there is no agricultural crop (legal or otherwise) that will allow you to payoff farmland mortgages on land that is selling for as much as $100,000 per acre. 

In the Victoria area of southern Vancouver Island, high land values mean that there have been no new large farms created in almost 30 years. Yes, there have been some farm generational transitions but there have been no new outright large farms created. I do not have the space here to document the number of dairy, vegetable or berry farms that are no longer in production. 

?But is the agricultural land still there? 

Well, yes and no. Yes, in the sense that most of it has not been paved over or subdivided into small lots. No, in the sense that it is no longer used for farming. Instead, the land is locked up in estate farms. 

What is an estate farm? It is often a small acreage ?owned by folks new to country living, who put up a big house and keep a few horses. By and large they are not involved in active farming. Some people say estate farms at least maintain greenspace. Maybe that's true, but greenspace ain't farmland. 

High land prices are not the only problem. As returns to farmers have fallen over the past 50 years and life on the farm has caused many to leave, we have also allowed agricultural education to be removed from our school curriculum. We have almost created a perfect storm scenario, where young people who are no longer exposed to farming in their family, are also not exposed to anything about their food system in the schools. With decreasing incomes being earned in agriculture, it is little wonder that fewer and fewer of our children consider farming as a career. 

On the other hand we know there are resourceful young people who are farming small pieces of land and trying to get onto larger pieces by selling their products at farmers' markets and working one or two jobs to help make the lease and or mortgage payments. 

If we are to really to begin to address the food security question we are going to have to find a way to allow people who really want to farm back on the land. It will take creative minds to put the agricultural lands back to work, but tax incentives for owners and long term lease access for young people, could be partial solutions. 

The outright purchase of development rights, although a wonderful idea that has worked in limited areas across the continent including Ontario, is simply too expensive for governments to consider any longer. 

The highly productive farmlands across this country must be protected. But simply locking those up will nor do that. Land conservation programs in general are not producing food. Farmers produce food. 
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