B.C.’s agriculture industry is calling for changes to government policies to allow it to produce more food.
Some farmers say that without an overhaul, it is going to get harder and harder to feed ourselves and to keep prices down.
UP Vertical Farms in Pitt Meadows is a one-stop shop for producing, processing and packaging leafy greens.
“We have to be able to feed ourselves,” Bahram Rashti, the CEO said. “If you actually look at the numbers of how much we’re actually importing it’s staggering. And the places we do get a lot of our food from like California and Arizona, they’re having drought issues and climate issues.”
Vertical farming offers efficiency, reliability and more importantly, price affordability and stability.
“You have to produce 350 acres worth of outdoor leafy greens on an annual basis to compare to the yields and produce that we get,” Rashti added.
While UP Vertical is on the cutting edge of agriculture technology, B.C.’s policies and regulations seem stuck in the past.
“We have to be able to change, modify, improve our existing laws… otherwise we will run into shortages more and more in the near future and you’ll see these skyrocketing prices coming up,” Rashti said.
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The missing link in the local food supply chain is processing but industrial land to build more capacity is in short supply.
“It becomes very difficult to support farmers when you have zero manufacturing,” Sylvain Charlebois, the Agri-Food Analytics Lab director said.
“That’s why there are a lot of companies that are relocating to say Alberta or Washington state.”
While UP Vertical Farms has been able to take root as a pioneer in Agri-Tech, industry experts say processing opportunities continue to wither around it because recommendations asking the government to loosen up regulations and different uses for agricultural land continue to be shelved.
“Manufacturing is often the forgotten child within the food supply chain,” Charlebois said.
A task force looked at revitalizing the Agricultural Land Commission Act in 2018.
Another task force and report was authored two years later but the stakeholders involved said none of those recommendations have yet to bear fruit.
“We don’t see a lot of actions happening out of that which is certainly frustrating,” Chilliwack councillor Chris Kloot said.
Kloot was part of the 2018 task force and questions whether the 50 per cent rule, where a processing facility can only be built, if 50 per cent of the product is farmed on site.
“Rather than saying 50 per cent of the product being grown on the individual portion of land, maybe it’s 50 per cent of British Columbian grown product,” Kloot suggested.
He said there is lots of protected agricultural land that remains unused because of poor soil, size of location, that is ripe for processing opportunities.
“When farmers are dealing with different supply chain issues or frustrations with lack of processing eventually something’s got to give,” Kloot said.
In a statement, B.C. Agricultural Minister Pam Alexis said “As part of my mandate, I was tasked with increasing food production and adding processing capacity – and I’m pleased to say we’re making progress.”
The ministry added that 84 per cent of non-farm use applications have been approved.
Instead of applying for exceptions, farmers said the system needs to change.
“To maximize what we can do in B.C., those laws need to be updated and looked at again,” Rashti said.
UP Vertical Farms would like nothing more than to grow operations in B.C.
But unless the province and Agricultural Land Commission modernizes its approach, the future of farming might fail to flourish.