Tough Times in B.C. Agriculture
Mike Makara pilots his pickup truck over the back roads of Abbotsford, pointing out acreages where dairy farmers have left for greener pastures. “Everywhere you see a silo,” he says, “that used to be a dairy farm.” One after another, the properties roll by. The farmers, he explains, couldn’t afford to sit on property worth close to $100,000 an acre. Most of them sold, bought properties twice the size in the Interior or Alberta and pocketed enough change to finance a comfortable retirement.
Dairy farmers were the lucky ones, Makara says; for pig farmers it’s a whole different story. “Pig farmers are under extreme distress,” he says, shaking his head. The reason: there’s no government-controlled quota system guaranteeing pig farmers prices and a market.
Today the fields in Abbotsford are planted in blueberries. Row after row, the neatly pruned shrubs seem to extend to all corners of the Fraser flood plain beneath the low-hanging clouds on this grey spring day. Many of the fields were planted a few years ago when a consumer craving for the berry pushed wholesale prices to about $1.65 a pound, compared to historical averages of around $0.65. Today a farmer is likely to garner around $0.35 a pound – if he considers it worth his while to harvest the berries.
“Here’s a new farm that was just established three years ago, at the very peak,” Makara says, pointing to a straggly field of barely sprouted shrubs. “This dairy farmer sold that land and the guy planted blueberries. Now it’s not well maintained because nobody has money. And the worst of it is, the poor guys who bought property at 80, 90 thousand an acre and planted blueberries – you’re not even breaking even on expenses, never mind mortgage payments, until five, six years after you’ve planted.”
Makara is one of the lucky ones. A third-generation blueberry farmer, he sold most of his 120 hectares to a Nova Scotia frozen-food processor in 1989. Today he tends his remaining 10 hectares of blueberries, and because his mature crop has been well tended – and because the mortgage was paid off long ago – his farm is profitable. Last year the eight hectares he harvested netted $15,000.
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