4 The hands that feed us Ottawa wants to increase Canada’s agri-food exports to $75 billion by 2025, creating jobs


for folks like you and me. It recently partnered with BC on a five-year, $5 million market development program that will help the province’s farmers export. Meanwhile, Victoria is seeking opportunities to grow local markets, doling out millions to


support sales at farmers’ markets, fund food security initiatives, and boost local purchasing in government and the private sector. Rather than reviewing the Right to Farm Act, it’s working to make sure there will be farmland left to farm. A key element, and one that’s often forgotten in romantic ideals, is the worker. It takes


many hands to get food from soil to shop, and even growing automation doesn’t mask the fact that there simply aren’t enough workers. There were fewer BC farmhands out of work last year than at any time in the past dozen years, pushing the unemployment rate down to its lowest rate since 2009. This year, an untold number of students from Quebec as well as 5,777 workers from


Mexico, 1,400 from Jamaica and hundreds more from other countries came to work the fields, orchards and greenhouses that produce the bounty we celebrate at Thanksgiving. Some enjoy top-notch accommodation and amenities; others receive medical care from


BC doctors (one worker recently received life-saving surgery) while sending cash to families back home from jobs that often pay better than what they’re used to. Yet others – a minority, thankfully – are removed BC farms by their consulates on account of abuse running from harassment to improper payment. BC, to its shame, has the highest rate of removals in Canada. A farm that doesn’t treat its workers right has every reason to find it difficult to get good


help. But for most farms, good help is hard to find, and without good help it’s hard to put good food on the table. We pride ourselves on eating local, but if no one’s willing to work locally, then we need to import labour. Some crops went unpicked this year because of bureaucratic hurdles in yet another season of record-breaking floods and fires. If we want farms to keep growing, we need to not only smooth the path to export but


make it easier for farmers to access and import workers. We regularly champion farm families and want to see farmland protected. This


Thanksgiving, let’s not forget to celebrate the farmhands they employ – the ones who make the bounty possible.


Saving farmland fruitless without water


Hot and dry days in May had the irrigation system off to an early start on our farm in 2018. Cooler temperatures and regular rain in June turned it off again until early July. Except for a single, brief thunder shower in late August, it was the first week of September before there were several days of significant rainfall. With more rain in the forecast, I shut the system down and put the reel- move to bed for the winter. While I was at it, I took some time to wander over the fields and ponder what irrigation means to us and where we’d be without it. A quick look over the fields and pastures will kill


The Back Forty BOB COLLINS


two birds with one stone. The pasture is green and vigorous and will keep all the grazers happy until Halloween. There are two generous cuts of hay and silage in the barn and were it not for a stand-off with several hundred Canada geese, there would be a third cut ready to go. A quick look at the few strips and corners the sprinkler doesn’t reach tells another story. It is sobering contrast. Without irrigation, there would have been a decent first cut, a poor second cut, and nothing to fight the geese over afterward. The pasture would have stopped growing in mid July and by August, the cows would be making a start on next winter’s feed. This was our precise experience 38 years ago when the hay we made in early June was all gone before the end of November. Apart from early potatoes harvested in late May and early June, none of the various crops we have grown here would be routinely successful without water to irrigate them. Thanks to the rain in June, the hours of operation recorded on the reel-


move were less than average. There can be wide variations in seasonal precipitation but only once in 38 years (2007) has there been a pattern and volume of rainfall that made irrigation unnecessary. It boils down to a simple truth: for all its attributes, our sandy silt loam soil is largely incapable of viable production without water. Fortunately, the farmer who sold us this land had


the foresight to procure a water licence in 1960. That licence has provided water for nearly 60 years; I can’t help but wonder if it will for 60 more. No licence can provide access to water that isn’t there.


Bone dry


As part of my ramble around the fields, I detoured into the woods to check out the little creek that meanders onto the farm and joins with a smaller one that springs from a small swamp, then leaves the farm again several hundred metres downstream. At the downstream end, the creek was bone dry. It remained so all the way to the confluence. Above that point, there were pools in the creek bed and eventually the pools were linked by a trickle of water. The smaller one originated in a deep pool that the salmon enhancement


society dug with our blessing many years ago. There was no sign of the coho that spawn here. Hopefully, they lurk unseen in the deep pond. The concerning scene at the creek is part of a bigger, worrying picture that includes dryer, hotter summers, watershed degradation, widening fluctuations in seasonal water flow, intensifying storm events, eroding river and stream banks, declining snowpack and retreating glaciers. A hundred years ago, the little creek was full of spawning coho every


October. Now, a few pairs will wait for storms in November to recharge the creek. The same storms routinely cause the river, and subsequently the creek, to flood in November and December. What used to flood once every 12 to 15 years floods four years out of five. What used to be the start of the rainy season is now the start of flood season. For the residential area downstream, it has become sandbag season. The coming dilemma for agriculture will revolve around timing. Water is needed when it’s least available and most in demand, and vice


versa. During the dramatic flooding in December 2014, the amount of water crossing our farm every hour was more than the total licence withdrawal since 1960. The flip side is just as scary. The newly envisioned Agricultural Land Commission is set to make farming the absolute focus for land use decisions. Here’s hoping there’s enough water to make its efforts worthwhile.


Publisher Cathy Glover


The agricultural news source in British Columbia since 1915 Vol. 104 No. 10. OCTOBER 2018


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COUNTRY LIFE IN BC • OCTOBER 2018


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