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Growing the north

In the time it takes a downtown Vancouver resident to get to the nearest Ikea store, a Prince George resident can go from the centre of the city to the region's rural, agricultural community.
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Andrew Adams carries a bag of cabbage at Hope Farms in Newlands, B.C. near Prince George.

In the time it takes a downtown Vancouver resident to get to the nearest Ikea store, a Prince George resident can go from the centre of the city to the region's rural, agricultural community.

For those wishing to live and work in that world, and only venture into the city for business and recreation, Prince George represents a ripe opportunity.

Modern agriculture is now attracting young families to the Northern and Central Interior.

That's right, farming is back. And the reason can be found in the office of any real estate agent.

"Land is up around $55,000 to $60,000 per acre in the lower Fraser Valley for farm-size agriculture land," said Gord Houweling, a Lower Mainland-based agent for B.C. Farm and Ranch Realty Corp. He was a dairy farmer for more than 30 years before getting into agriculture real estate and, for awhile, he was a plumber in Prince George.

"In the Vanderhoof [an hour west of Prince George] area there was a large parcel of irrigated land selling for $2,000 to $3,000 per acre. The ones who have left the larger urban centres and moved to the Interior have changed their business model to receive less farm income but incur less farm expense on the land acquisition."

Houweling cautioned that this is not a groundswell movement, but he does know of two dairies - the most capital-intensive of all farming operations - that closed in the Lower Mainland and reopened farther north, one in Merritt and the other in Quesnel, just over an hour south of Prince George.

For logistical reasons, he estimated there would be little movement of large-scale poultry operations in the north, but more dairy development could be expected in the general Prince George region soon, along with cattle operations and other meat livestock.

The 150 acres Andrew Adams and his wife Janie bought two years ago is exactly the operation Houweling was talking about.

The young couple is from far away - she from Quebec, he from Kansas - and both are university graduates. Janie holds her education degree from the University of Northern B.C. in Prince George while Andrew earned a degree in conservation and agriculture from Kansas State University.

They could be anywhere on the continent working on their dreams, but they fell in love with Prince George's open slate of opportunities, wide field of helpful people getting them on their feet, and highly cost-effective land.

"P.G. needs us, and it has lots and lots of options. It's just a great city," said Andrew Adams. "If someone is thinking about farming, there is probably no better time to get into it, with all the market awareness about locally produced food, and the cheap land around here. Yes, the growing season is shorter for the veggies but you can pick plenty of crops that'll do well in this climate. Start reading, get your networking going, and there is so much help all around you from older farmers who don't have anyone to pass the farm to but they can't do the work like they used to. They are a wealth of information and for the price of giving them a hand on some things, they'll give you all the help you need to get going."

Alan Goode from Greenhawk & Northern Acreage supplies said he has been noticing an uptick in his business and some interesting developments have surfaced in his side of the industry.

"Some of the big cattle guys are buying Cariboo land for hay and grazing," Goode said. "We see that trend happening. When the mad cow disease thing happened [in 2003] it just destroyed the beef market around here, but when you see those big guys from outside the area buying up as much land and equipment as they are, that's a big sign of recovery. They are branching out because their businesses are building up. And we've got little operators starting up because the opportunity in farming makes sense again, and the land is still really cheap in this area. We are seeing small dairy operations start up and we are seeing a tonne of small poultry starting up. We sell more poultry feed than anything else."

Andrew Snih and his wife Jocelyn are co-owners of Huber Farm Equipment, one of northern B.C.'s oldest agriculture service firms.

He said the signs were subtle, but unmistakable that farming as a sector was feeling healthy again.

High beef prices, combined with dry summers in the region, are driving up the cost of hay.

"This fall, which has never happened before, people bought a whack of balers," Snih said. "They are investing in what they need now to get ready for spring. They are reinvesting in their farming future. I would say the numbers are normal but what's different is the timing. We see people managing their fields more effectively to get the proper yields, but it is all weather dependent."

If any equipment trends are emerging, he said, it was hardware aimed at efficiency like gentler handling apparatuses and tailored nutrition machines.

"There are several government grants available right now for cattle handling equipment, and also for people who want to invest in cattle identification and weighing systems," said Snih.

"You can't manage what you can't measure. We're finding people are starting to think of that as an important part of being profitable. The fact those grants are there is helping a lot. It is all about herd management. If people choose to invest in that stuff, they can get up to 75 per cent back, which is significant."

UNBC is playing a significant role on the operations side of the industry, with initiatives like crop studies led by graduate student Serena Black or on the business psychology side with studies led by another grad student, Mike Dewar, who was conducting research on the motivations and success of new and young farmers and ranchers in Northern B.C.'s Highway 16 corridor.

One of those he made contact with was Adams, who has only been on his rural Prince George spread for two years and already has a modest income and a bucolic lifestyle raising Berkshire pigs, sheep, a cornucopia of veggies and herbs, with special attention paid to heritage seeds and open-pollination varieties. An organic designation is pending which, he said, would increase consumer demand to as much as he could produce, at premium prices.

"There aren't a lot of food producers around here, and there are 80,000 people to feed right in Prince George," Adams said.

"We want to help fill that void being left by older farmers not being replaced by younger people, and we want to help address the big problem of food security. The system in B.C. is really vulnerable, and that is especially true in the north. Grocery stores don't make money by warehousing food, they want to move it, there are new shipments every day. If there is even a blip in that supply chain - a natural event, a strike - Prince George only has three days of food on the shelf. We need much more food produced here locally, to reduce that danger."

Houweling said many hurdles are still in the way. Those already invested in the lower Fraser Valley and Okanagan-Similkameen had growing conditions in their favour, access to shipping routes, plenty of labour, and services and supplies at the ready.

Plus, agriculture land in the Lower Mainland was expected to continue to increase in value.

However, he said, those trying to break into agriculture fresh could get a lot more land in the north, which was not without its service and supply sector, and instead of shipping far away, the market was local for a lot of products. The key, he said, was expect modest returns, not rich ones and research which agri-food products to specialize in.