The separation between farmland and residential areas is evident in this aerial photograph shown to Central Okanagan Regional District directors this week during a presentation by two agrologists who outlined a number of challenges facing the agricultural sector in ѻý
Credit: Ministry of Agriculture
By Ron Seymour
The Daily Courier
The number of farm-related jobs in ѻý dropped by one-quarter between 2020 and 2021, Central Okanagan regional district directors heard Thursday.
The agricultural sector faces considerable challenges ranging from astronomical prices for farmland, particularly in the Okanagan, to a diminishing interest in farming among young people, two provincial agrologist said in a report.
“Agricultural land in ѻý is very limited and under great pressure,” Alison Fox and Chris Zabek write in the report.
A litany of statistics are offered to indicate some notable negative trends developing in farming across the province.
For example, about 30,000 people were employed in the agricultural sector in both 2019 and 2020, but this number dropped to about 23,000 in 2021, though it has rebounded since then.
ѻý has by far the highest price of farmland in Canada, and the value rose by more than 30 per cent just between 2020 and 2022. In the Okanagan, a typical acre of farmland costs $107,000, compared to a range of between $4,000 and $28,000 an acre in Ontario, Fox and Zabek say.
Farmers in ѻý keep getting older and older. The average age of a farmer was 48.4 in 1996, but that has dropped steadily to 56 in 2021. The number of farmers under the age of 35 dropped by half between 2011 and 2021.
On the other hand, gross domestic product of all agricultural-related activities has risen slightly, from $2.4 billion in 2017 to $2.8 billion in 2021. Crops account for about four-fifths of agricultural GDP, while animal production accounts for most of the rest.
Only about five per cent of ѻýѻý total area is within the provincial Agricultural Land Reserve, the purpose of which is to protect and support farming while discouraging the encroachment of residential, commercial, and industrial development.
The six big pressures on farming in ѻý, Fox and Zabek say, are limited availability of agricultural land, its high price, pressures on farmland from urbanization and the need for more housing, lack of industrial land in ѻý, and the aging demographic profile of ѻý farmers.