2 CENSUS shows declining employment
individual regions of BC, with farm numbers declining in each of the province’s eight census regions. This contributed to a 57% decrease in overall farm employment in the Cariboo, the one region where the average number of workers per farm also fell. The slack was taken up by the Thompson-Okanagan and Kootenay regions, where total farm employment increased 16.7% and 5.9%, respectively. But in Vancouver, one of 10 cities singled out in the census, the numbers were nothing but positive. Census farms increased 14% to 40 last year, up from 35 in 2011, while total farm employment grew 107% to 120, up from just 58 in 2011. This worked out to an average of eight workers per farm, on par with Maple Ridge, which saw average farm employment increase 115%.
Despite having virtually no farmland, Vancouver has championed urban farms in
recent years. The majority are small-scale produce operations (livestock beyond four laying hens is prohibited). Similarly, neighbouring
Burnaby boosted its farm count 9% to 47 in 2016 from 43 in 2011. Abbotsford added 25 farms, a 2% increase, for a new total of 1,307. Meanwhile, traditionally rural municipalities lost farms as consolidation and
development pressures took their toll. Langley led the way with a 19% drop in census farms, while Richmond, Delta and Surrey lost an average of 10%. Still, revenues for small- scale, urban agriculture face headwinds. Vancouver was one of
three jurisdictions – the Sunshine Coast and Fraser- Fort George regions were the others – that saw per-farm revenue drop in 2016 versus
SAFETY needs to be a habit The hurdle for many
people, Steward says, is making safety a habit, and being able to think
dynamically about the risks they’re facing. It’s easy to have the right attitude and take precautions, but opportunities always exist to make the wrong call. “The reality is, risk in
agriculture is always in flux. The creek you crossed yesterday that’s six inches is
2011. Vancouver saw average per-farm sales decline 15% to $276,881.
South of the Fraser and
across the rest of BC, consolidation boosted revenues. Delta had among the most productive farms in the province with average revenues of $1.2 million, up 44% from the 2011 census. The provincial average was $212,766, up 43% from 2011. The region posting the
COUNTRY LIFE IN BC • JUNE 2017 nfrom page 1
strongest growth was the North Coast, where per-farm revenues increased 135% to average $44,058. Peace region farmers also put in a strong showing, led by the Northern Rockies area with average per-farm revenues growing 162% to $52,068. The greatest growth among municipalities occurred in Maple Ridge, where per-farm revenues increased 108% to $91,705.
nfrom page 1
now six feet: you can have a procedure for moving across the creek but you must be able to read the dynamics that the risk has just presented to you,” says Steward, a working cowboy who knows how quickly conditions can change on the range. “You get out in a field by yourself and all sorts of things can happen. So dynamic risk management is really the key to the ability to survive things that turn ugly.” Training people to gauge the risks of a particular situation and still do the right thing is something the farm safety consultants affiliated with AgSafe try to do. “We can put a thousand things on pieces of paper in a binder in an office, but that
pertains to a certain action or activity with a particular piece of equipment or task you’re trying to manage in a given context,” says Steward. “But the thing that will keep you alive will be your ability to exercise a changed behaviour given the in-flux or dynamic risk. … That’s one of the things we’re trying to help people with.”
ICBC
When it comes to operating farm vehicles and equipment on public roads, ICBC has produced a guide that summarizes what’s required. Part 16 of WorksafeBC’s occupational health and safety (OHS) regulations also covers what’s required for the
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safe operation of mobile equipment. Complying with the licensing, insurance and operating requirements should be second-nature, but grey areas exist. Seatbelts, for example, are mandatory where provided and required by law, or when operating tractors where there’s a significant risk of roll-over or a risk of uneven ground (even if there’s a roll- over protection system in place). However, the regulations note that they’re not required “where there is no significant hazard of rollover, and the surface in the area of operation is maintained free of ground irregularities which might cause a rollover.” The call is left up to the operator and that’s where Steward says safety becomes a question not just of compliance but knowing what to do.
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“You need to manage risk because certain things are inherently risky,” he says. “There’s compliance, which is usually imposed upon us. There’s the attitude that we bring to health and safety which determines how far we’re going to go with some things, and then there’s the actual doing of [the] things that you know need to be done.”
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