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Country Life in BC • October 2016 New catalogue highlights export-ready products


BC agri-food export growth has outpaced forestry and mining


by PETER MITHAM


VANCOUVER – With the province’s agri-food exports surging, BC agriculture minister Norm Letnick unveiled a glossy new catalogue of export-ready agri-food products on the Vancouver waterfront on September 12.


Accompanied by federal agriculture minister


Lawrence MacAulay, Letnick said the publication aims to familiarize overseas buyers with the range of BC products available to them. The genesis of the project, which Letnick described as a “labour of love,” was his inability during a trade mission in 2014 to name more than a couple of products buyers in China could order then and there for local markets.


China No. 2


China (including Hong Kong) is the second-biggest importer of BC agri-food products after the US, importing $406 million worth of products in 2015. Letnick said the catalogue will help expand the province’s exports to China as well as countries around the Pacific Rim, including South Korea, India and elsewhere.


BC exported $3.5 billion worth of agricultural products to 150 countries in 2015, a 23% increase over


2014.


The growth of agri-food exports has been a bright spot in BC’s international trade portfolio, outpacing traditionally strong sectors such as forestry and mining.


Over 600 products


Of the more than 600 products Letnick said are available for export, the top five are farmed salmon ($411 million), food for processing ($294 million), blueberries ($218 million), baked goods ($159 million) and


mushrooms ($131 million). The other $2.3 billion worth of exports includes a range of processed products, which represent the majority of offerings in the catalogue.


Just 16 of the nearly 100 companies featured in the catalogue are primary producers of meat, fruit and vegetables. Letnick couldn’t pin a value to the


contribution export markets make to farm gate receipts, which approached $3.1 billion last year.


However, Letnick said growing agri-food sales at home and abroad are putting more money into farmers’ pockets.


The province’s agriculture sector enjoyed a net cash income last year of $440 million and even income after depreciation, was positive at $65.3 million after nine years of red ink.


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But the thrust of his remarks focused on Vancouver’s port facilities and the launch pad those provide for Asia-bound products. “We have to make sure that they can handle the products as fast as they possibly can and as efficiently as they possibly can,” he said. MacAulay’s comments won’t sit well with municipalities such as Richmond or local farmland advocates who have challenged the Port of Vancouver’s plans to tap local farmland for port-related uses.


Yet the port, as a federal entity, holds the trump card: while it has pledged to file exclusion applications to remove protected farmland from the province’s Agricultural Land Reserve, it’s under no obligation to do so as an arm of the senior level of government. “I don’t think we would be bound [by the Agricultural Land Commission],” Robin Silvester, president and CEO of the port authority, said earlier this year. “We have supremacy.”


Site Economics Ltd. prepared a report for


BC Minister of Agriculture Norm Letnick, far left, and federal Minister of


Agriculture and Agri-Food Lawrence


MacAulay used the Vancouver waterfront backdrop at Canada Place to launch the provincial


ministry’s new catalogue of export-ready


agri-food products last month.


(Photo courtesy of BCMA)


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the port authority in October 2015 that estimates port activities will require approximately 2,700 acres by 2030. The demand could cost Delta alone 1,500 acres of productive farmland, according to the Delta Farmers’ Institute.


Agriculture is “almost meaningless”


Silvester believes local agriculture is “almost meaningless” when it comes to local food security but that stance is at odds with MacAulay’s message to the Greater Vancouver Board of Trade.


Responding to a question from the audience regarding organic production, MacAulay said his job is to ensure farmers in Canada are capturing local markets before venturing into exports.


“There are products that we aren’t producing enough of, and I want to help you produce those products so that you receive the benefit,” he told his audience, which included very few farmers. “My responsibility is to help you, and I want to do it.”


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