Farming’s footprint looks to be shrinking
Report suggests farmland in Central Okanagan dropped by a quarter during past 5 years
Farming is a diminishing feature of the Central Okanagan landscape, a new agriculture report suggests.
Total farmland in the Central Okanagan dropped 25 per cent between 2011 and 2016, with the number of farms also falling 14 per cent and average farm size shrinking 13 per cent.
However, gross farm receipts increased 24 per cent over the past five years, from $96.5 million to $120 million, suggesting there’s still money to be made for those willing to work the land.
Updated information on the economic footprint of farming in the greater Kelowna area is contained in the newly released 2017 Economic Profile for Agriculture, released by the Central Okanagan Economic Development Commission.
The report brings together data from Statistics Canada, the Agricultural Land Commission and the Ministry of Environment.
But the downward trend in some key farming indicators presents something of a misleading picture concerning the health of local agriculture, says Fred Steele, president of the BC Fruit Growers’ Association.
“Yes, some numbers are down, but they don’t include farmland that’s been recently replanted with higher yielding varieties,” Steele said. “That land, and there’s a lot of it, is considered to be out of production until the tree matures and bears fruit.
“The tree fruit industry is retooling,” Steele said. “When the new orchards, with much higher yields, come fully into production, I think you’ll see those numbers shoot back up again.”
Provincewide, the number of farms in B.C. fell 13 per cent between 2011 and 2016, double the national decline. The owners of four of every 10 farms in B.C. earn less than $10,000 annually in gross farm receipts.
But an increase in the number of very large farming operations helped push net cash income for primary agricultural production up 21 per cent between 2014 and 2015, from $362 million to $440 million.
In the Central Okanagan, total farmland area fell from 31,368 hectares in 2011 to 23,461 in 2016. The number of farms also fell, from 1,020 to 879 over the same period, and average farm size decreased from 31 ha to 27 ha.
“These trends are attributable to several factors — new technologies and varieties of tree fruits mean local farmers can get much higher yields from their land, which helps offset the loss of farm acreage,” part of the new report states.
“Large farms are establishing where tree fruit hasn’t traditionally been grown, and technological advances are improving operational efficiencies and production,” the report says.
But the document also notes other trends that make farming increasingly difficult in the Central Okanagan. These include:
— lower production costs in other parts of the world, which allow fresh produce to be imported more cheaply than local farmers can grow it;
— the high cost of agricultural land, which discourages young people from getting into the business;
— and difficulty many farmers have in finding seasonal workers to harvest crops.
In the past five years, the amount of farmland used for various purposes has declined in five of six categories, the report says.
Cropland production is down 10 per cent, seeded pasture land is down 56 per cent, natural pasture land is down 45 per cent and other farmland areas are down 83 per cent.
Land cultivated with hay has dropped 32 per cent, field crop acreage is down six per cent and areas under vegetable cultivation are down 26 per cent.
Even the amount of land covered with greenhouses, for flower and vegetable production, has dropped by half, from 28,000 square metres to 14,000 square metres.
The loss of productive agricultural land is accompanied by a corresponding decline in the number of animals on Kelowna area farms.
Hens and chickens number fewer than 11,000, compared to more than 76,000 five years ago. The cattle and calf population is down 12 per cent, sheep and lambs are down 20 per cent, and horses and ponies are down 18 per cent.
The number of beef cows, however, has risen from 1,230 to 1,797.