Photo by Government of BC
Touring the cranberry bogs
BC Minister of Agriculture Lana Popham (center) visited one of BC's top cranberry producers during the Fall harvest.
O&V talked with Agriculture Minister Lana Popham for our year-end edition. This is Minister Popham’s second year as Ag Minister, having been elected and appointed in May 2017. The first time O&V spoke to the Minister was shortly after the election, and the Ministry of Agriculture had just begun implementing the first policies from the new NDP government. In this interview, we focus on how these policies have begun shaping the fruit and wine industries.
O&V: “What has gone well for the fruit industry over this time last year?”
Minister Popham: “I think the tree fruit industry was quite pleased to receive the $5 million Tree Fruit Competitiveness fund. We are at a point with the industry where there needed to be some investment as far as upgrading infrastructure and focusing on disease management and marketing opportunities. The BC Fruit Growers Association is administering the fund and they really took some time to figure out an effective application process. They have just begun taking applications, which will go through Investment Agriculture.”
“We’ll see what ideas growers have, but I know from speaking with them that some of the infrastructure they are using is very old and that is one thing that needs a lot of work. They may also want to take advantage of the Buy BC programing that we already have in place and access matching funds for marketing that way. We know they are always trying to expand their markets internationally and this may help. I don’t approve the applications, but I look forward to reviewing the ideas behind them, it is always pretty exciting.
“We have continued to support the replant program. I think that it has been very necessary and we will continue to do that, but I think this competitiveness fund brings it up to another level.”
O&V: “Labour shortage is an issue across the fruit industry. Do you see a role for the BC government to support growers in their need for workers?”
Minister Popham: “Absolutely. I had the pleasure of hosting the federal, provincial and territorial Ag Minister’s meeting in Vancouver this summer. That was one of the things we brought forward to Federal Minister MacAulay. Every province is suffering the same labour shortages. In BC with our Mexican workers there have been a lot of problems just on the speed of processing applications and because our season starts the earliest in Canada, we see the effects of a bad system earliest in the year. We have a task force in BC working with growers, the province and the Mexican Consulate through the BC Agriculture Council. We start to get workers by the third week of January and we have been told that that is going to be much more smooth. Now, we’ve been told that in the past, but we’ve had no reasons to believe that in the past. The Mexican Ministry of Agriculture has taken over the lead from a group of ministries. I have been told that there have been changes in Mexico on the way workers are processed and we are ready on our end.
“We invited the Mexican consulate to BC Ag days this month. Often temporary foreign workers are in the background but we couldn’t operate without them, so we really wanted to be sure they knew how grateful we are for their efforts and that they are part of our agriculture industry.”
O&V: “Can you tell us about the new legislation governing the ALR?”
Minister Popham: “I got a list of recommendations from the committee that did the public consultation on the ALR. Bill 52, that we tabled last week, deals with the top three issues on the land use side of things.
“We have made it extremely difficult to dump construction fill on ALR. The penalties will be very large fines and possibly even jail time now. We will be giving the Agriculture Land Commission that tool to use as well as taking a look at what they need for enforcement and compliance. We’ve got some pieces of agricultural land that have had up to 200,000 loads of junk on it. Some of this is rebar and concrete, but some of it is also toxic.
“We are proposing to change the ALR back to one zone. When we looked at what has happened over the last four years, we realized that it just created a lot of confusion and a lot of administrative burden. When I hear people say we need zone 2 because when I am not farming in the winter I have a mechanics shop and I fix vehicles, well you can do that in zone 1 or zone 2.
“And we have addressed mega mansions. We have created a maximum house size of 5400 sq. feet. If you want to get bigger than that you will have to go through your local government to apply to the ALC.”
O&V: “One topic you discussed with me when you were in opposition was increasing the amount of local food going into public institutions like hospitals. How is that progressing?”
Minister Popham: “Well it’s not as easy as I thought it was in opposition!
“We will be doing a pilot project in Kelowna in this coming year. It is going to be possible to move more BC food into the hospital system. I have been talking with apple growers about what do you need to help set up institutional processing lines? Especially something like apple sauce how do we get that processed so that it is available to go into hospitals? Hopefully we will be able to make some bigger changes after the pilot project.
“It is not only going to give more opportunities for people to eat BC food in the hospital system, but it is going to create more manufacturing jobs as well. But it’s a bit like turning a cruise ship around … it is not fast.
O&V: “Given the side letter that was signed at the USMCA on US wine going on BC grocery shelves, is your Ministry involved in discussions as to how that might be implemented?”
Minister Popham: “I think the year time frame of the agreement allows us time to adjust our own marketing strategies. But at this time, I can’t predict what that will look like. The wine industry is in good shape and this is a little setback. I think we are going to be fine. Programs like our Eat Drink Local campaign create domestic loyalty and that is a really fun project to be part of.
O&V: “How do we get free trade for wine between our own provinces? “
Minister Popham: “Oh, my goodness! How long have we been having that discussion? That came up at the provincial territorial meeting in the summer. There are some provinces that are for it and some that aren’t. I was working pretty closely over the spring and summer with the Quebec Agriculture Minister talking about how we could get that going between us and they had an election. There is a new Minister and I have to start that process all over again. It’s like molasses in January, unfortunately.”
O&V: “Anything else you would like to add?”
Minister Popham: “I would like to share an event we had yesterday that affects the whole province. ‘Every Chef Needs a Farmer Every Farmer Needs a Chef’, was a provincial crop planning and menu planning session in downtown Vancouver. Farmers from all areas of the province and chefs mostly from the Lower Mainland were able to network for a full day and figure out what chefs need farmers to grow and what farmers are growing that chefs didn’t know about. Some really interesting partnerships have already begun. That is an annual event we are going to continue on with because agriculture and food production are an economic driver across the province.”