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2 FARM ancillary to restaurant


production that would support its brewing plans. The restaurant operates six


days a week from 8 am to 5 pm, and owners Jodie Lucas and Will Gemmell claim its operations use more than half the farm’s production. Rusted Rake grows vegetables and fruit, and has a small number of livestock. A field of Red Fife wheat provides flour for baking. The restaurant also uses


eggs from Springford Farm and greens from Northwest Bay Ranch. It wasn’t enough for the


ALC. “There is not a sufficient amount of agriculture to support a restaurant of the Eatery's size and scale given the number of seats and its hours of operation,” its decision says. “As such, the Panel finds that the farm has become ancillary to the Eatery, rather than vice versa.” A similar argument applied


to the brewery. Provincial regulations stipulate that enough farm product must be produced to meet production requirements before a brewery is developed. However, Rusted Rake had acquired equipment sufficient to produce 14,500 litres of beer a year with just 4,000 pounds of wheat in hand. An order for additional equipment to expand production is in place, with the aim of producing 12.5 tons of barley a year to support production of 40,000 litres annually.


Once again, land commissioners were


unimpressed. “Farming must come first,” they write. “In the case of the application, the applicants are requesting to operate a brewery in advance of reaching the threshold of primary farm product production.” The restaurant closed on September 8, to the


disappointment of those who felt it was a shining example of putting farmland to good use and adding value to its production. Both are goals within the mandate of BC agriculture minister Lana Popham, who operates with the mantra of Grow BC, Feed BC and Buy BC. However, supporters


quickly took to social media to vent frustration with the land commission’s decision, including opposition agriculture critic Ian Paton. “It’s hard to protect farmland when the NDP keep killing opportunities for farmers in BC to think outside the box in order to remain viable,” he wrote on Facebook. Supporters of Rusted Rake


have launched a petition on Change.org seeking a more liberal approach to managing the ALR, specifically targeting the repeal of bills 52 and 15, which they believe are killing innovation and infringing on private property rights. It had received nearly 11,000 signatures as of September 22. A public consultation by the province last year on ways to revitalize the ALC and the Agricultural Land Reserve drew just 2,600 responses. Many also turned out for a


September 19 meeting in Merville, where assistant deputy minister James Mack tried to explain the rationale for the land commission’s decision. “This isn’t about Rusted


Rake; this is about a high-level message,” he said, emphasizing the big picture. “One of the things in my head is I don’t want a White Spot with a Buy BC logo building on ALR land.” There’s already significant


pressure from people trying to skirt the rules with a creativity that impresses him, he said. This means the rules need to be clear, but updates are inevitable in order to keep pace with the changing landscape. “We never get it 100% right, and so we’re always tweaking and adjusting,” he said. “We would like to see


ONLINE abuse “We are the only SPCA-


certified dairy farm in Canada,” she says. “We’ve been sharing our life online for almost six years. We’ve encountered this activist activity from time to time, but it’s ramped up in the past several years. They focus on any farms on social media and they say whatever they want.” Treur contacted Laurie


Throness, Liberal MLA for Chilliwack-Kent, who visited the farm. “Farmers are very worried and rightly so,” says Throness. “These activists are complaining about alleged abuses of animals. It’s just a wedge issue into their larger goal to cut animals out of


agribusiness, but again, if we get it wrong, what we get is tourism. We literally have people come in saying, ‘I want to do some tourism. What’s the minimum amount of agriculture I’ve got to do to get in?’ So that’s not right, either.”


Unimpressed The comments left Rusted


Rake co-owner Jodie Lucas unimpressed. The hall applauded her argument that restaurants which grow what they serve and source from other local growers should be allowed.


“Not being able to have a


restaurant is being pretty biased,” she told Mack. “There’s got to be some sort of allowance … they’re a direct farm use.” She said if White Spot or


McDonald's set up in the ALR,


COUNTRY LIFE IN BC • OCTOBER 2019 nfrom page 1


cooking food grown on the property, she would eat there. “[If] you could see and watch it and I knew it was coming right into [the kitchen] to make my hamburger at White Spot ... I would eat that burger,” she said.


Speaking afterwards, she described the meeting as “a good conversation,” but the results didn’t make her happy. While the commission’s


chair, Jennifer Dyson, refrained from commenting on the case at any length, noting an appeal was possible, Lucas told Country Life in BC an appeal was news to her. She hasn’t initiated one, and is focusing her efforts on meeting the conditions the ALC has set for opening a brewery. For more coverage of the ALR meeting in Merville, see page 7.


nfrom pg 1


farming altogether. But 99% of Canadians do not agree with that.” Concern for safety and biosecurity among farmers is growing and Throness says he’s received correspondence from other farmers asking what he’s able to do about the situation.


Private member’s bill


“I plan to introduce a private member’s bill when the legislature is in session in October,” he says. “Under the BC Trespass Act, to trespass or obstruct the processing of food would get extra penalties and I’m talking about dollars per person.” Invasive animal activism is


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widespread. On the Labour Day weekend, several dozen activists broke into a turkey farm near Fort Macleod, AB parked themselves against the inside barn wall, then demanded that the farm owners not press charges and allow the media in. RCMP are continuing to investigate. In Australia, the New South


Wales government recently stepped up fines for trespassing and biosecurity violations. Fines range from $1,000 on the spot for any animal rights trespasser illegally entering a farm to stage protests, and $220,000 and up for organizations behind trespassing action. The Animal Enterprise


Terrorism Act passed in 2006 is a US federal law that prohibits anyone from engaging in conduct designed to damage or interfere with livestock operations, including damages or losses to property or actions which place a person in reasonable fear of injury. “Their goal is to end all animal farming,” said Treur of the activists. “All animal use stopped. They are not interested in animal welfare. We farm according to best standards and practices and the majority of our followers care about how we care for our animals. “Animal activists are very


vocal and in the minority. However, the activism has really slowed down since I’ve been doing all the blocking on Facebook. That really helps. I’ve been concentrating on all the positives of dairy farming, which is what I love.”


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