ACE is agriculture and more
New centre’s director is a geographer who intends to bring an interdisciplinary approach to its operation.
By Grant Ullyot T
here will be more to ACE — the Agriculture Centre of Excellence — than agriculture. And the man in charge of it has never been a farmer, but he sees his qualifications as a natural fit for the role.
ACE began as an initiative of the Chilliwack Economic Partners Corporation and it has been formally recognized by the University of the Fraser Valley (UFV) as a program aimed at developing more of the agricultural potential in the Fraser Valley.
Dr. Garry Fehr, a faculty member in the geography and environmental studies departments at UFV, will oversee ACE, working with advisory groups from within UFV and externally. He will be reporting to Dr. Adrienne Chan, the Associate Vice President of Research Engagement and Graduate Studies. Fehr’s appointment is for three years, and a surprising aspect of the appointment is that he is a professor of geography with no direct agricultural background. Fehr’s response to that is that people don’t really understand what geography is. “I do the economic aspects of geography, looking at things like flows of trade or the way people interact with their landscapes or environments,” he explains. “How do farmers react to new government policy that changes who they can sell to and buy from, or what changes are there to the ways they can treat their land? That’s all geography.
“However, most people wouldn’t understand these issues to be
GRANT ULLYOT
Dr. Garry Fehr has begun a three-year appointment as director of the newly-established Agriculture Centre of Excellence in Chilliwack.
geography.”
He looks upon geography as a natural, interdisciplinary study. “In other words, we shamelessly borrow concepts from economists, political scientists, sociologists or the national sciences, and we need to work together.
“That is the role of ACE, to bring all these people together, including the people who work the land, because their perspective is all too often overlooked.
“And that is why they hired a geographer to head up ACE, because I do this naturally, working to facilitate opportunities for people from all different walks of life.” Fehr was born in Victoria but moved to Kamloops in his late teens. He spent much of his adult life working for BC Tel as a lineman and travelled almost the entire province, so he understands the variation and diversity in B.C.
In 1996 he took early retirement from BC Tel and started his own water and vacuum truck company in
8 British Columbia Berry Grower • Spring 2016 Smithers.
“There were a lot of people building in rural areas in the north where there is no natural aquifer – you’re drilling into hard rock trying to find cracks in the rock out of which you can get water. So a lot of people were drilling 400 feet and getting nothing but high sulphur content.
“I was actually one of those people and I determined there was a need to build water systems, so I acquired an old milk tanker and started building water cisterns. Then I delivered water and when I sold the company 12 years later I had over 120 customers.”
After selling his business Fehr started university at age 39, enrolling at what is now Thompson- Rivers University in Kamloops. He had the finances to help pay for his tuition and did his under- graduate degree in three years. Then he went to Guelph University in Ontario to get his PhD.
“I have had some really good talks
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