According to Metro Vancouver, some 20 thousand hectares of land within the Agricultural Land Reserve is not being farmed. With the help of Kent Mullinix, the director of Sustainable Agriculture with Kwantlen University, the municipalities of Surrey and Langley are developing strategies to get their agricultural lands that are not in use back into the business of producing food. According to a report drafted by Mullinix’s team, in Surrey, putting agricultural land to use in small-scale farm operations could contribute 2,500 jobs, over $173 million to the municipality’s agricultural sector, and satisfy local demand for 24 commonly consumed crops.
This work is tangential to a larger project Mullinix has undertaken that aims to re-localize the food system in South Western BC. In May, he came to Bowen to explain the project for the Bowen Agricultural Alliance (BAA)Annual General Meeting. Next week, the board president of the BAA, Elle Glave, will make a presentation about this initiative to council, asking for support. If our council gets on board, it will join Burnaby, North Vancouver and Squamish (among others) as an official supporter of the Southwestern British Columbia Food System Design Project.
“There are plenty of reasons why we should be trying to re-localize our agricultural food system,” says Glave. “Because of climate change and the cost of fossil fuels, all of us dependent on the global, industrial food systems are going to see food prices rise. Here on Bowen we have added transportation costs created through the ferry. Re-localizing our food system is going to be critical to any efforts to build a resilient community.”
For Mullinix re-localizing our agricultural food systems is imperative.
“We can say what ever will be will be and let the market figure it out, but I really don’t think that’s a good approach,” says Mullinix. “In my forty years of working, in some form with the agricultural sector I’ve seen a massive shift away from the medium sized family farm to massive, corporate farms. I’ve seen whole farms boarded up, I’ve seen small grocery stores forced out of business because they can’t compete with Walmart and I’ve seen parents tell their children to avoid a career in agriculture. I think in Southern BC we are very fortunate that a lot of the farms are still family run but we can’t take that for granted.”
To that Mullinix adds a host of positive impacts that he hopes this project will bring about: the strengthening of local economies by the retention of more “local food dollars,” the creation of rewarding jobs, and environmental benefits created through good farming practices.
A food system, he says, transcends farmers.
“Farmers are just one piece of the puzzle. There’s also distribution, storage, sales, waste-management, and of course the people who eat the food. While we have not yet studied Bowen Island, we know it is a candidate for this project because there are people producing food, and there are people selling food, and there are people eating food.”
Mullinix’s project is in its first year and first phase.
“At this stage we are trying to understand the challenges and also the potential for regionalized food systems in South Western BC,” says Mullinix. “The Ministry of Agriculture bandies about this statistic that says we are something like 46 percent self-reliant in agriculture but I think that the only way this can be true is if you’re talking about raspberries and blueberries. …”
Mullinix says that as the research of his team progresses, they will work with municipalities to come up with something of a roadmap to re-localize their food systems.
“We’ll look at what kind of businesses exist as well as what kind of businesses are needed, we’ll look at what kind of food people are eating as well, what is being produced and what could be produced, we’ll look at distribution systems, and how communities within the region will be interacting with each other. The five bioregions we’ve mapped out in South Western British Columbia are all in this together, so we’ll need to work together.”
While Mullinix and his research team have not focused their attention to Bowen Island yet, he says he is sure that Bowen will have a role to play within ths project.
“We know there’s agricultural land on Bowen and we know there are people who eat. So we know that there is production opportunity, we just have to engage the stakeholders and figure out how to grow that.”
Marg McConnell and Drew Burgess of Bowen Brook Farm
Marg McConnell and Drew Burgess of Bowen Brook Farm have been growing and selling food on Bowen Island for close to two decades.
They make up roughly 25 boxes of fresh produce that might include apples, plums, raspberries, blueberries, rhubarb or figs, as well as a wide variety of vegetables for Bowen families each week.
They also provide the local restaurants with fruit, vegetables and herbs.
“Mike [Nagy] has been particularly amazing and supporting us, and working with us, to get local food on the table at Miksa,” says McConnell. “He’ll come up with ideas of what to plant, like cylindrical beets or yellow carrots, to match his menu.”
Bowen Brook Farm also sells produce to restaurants in the city.
“We won’t sell weekly, but occasionally we’ll sell 50 pounds of garlic, or 25 pounds of asparagus, in one go, to a restaurant,” says McConnell, adding that any transport off the island makes the business of gardening far too costly to make any money. “They are going to start a market in Horseshoe Bay and I was asked to participate, but I said no way. Once you add in the price of gas and the ferry, its just not worth it. My husband, Drew, had to drive out to Abbotsford today to get mushroom manure. Adding up all the costs, a trip like that gets very expensive very quickly. Also, if I run out of seeds, I likely need to go into the city to get them.”
Ian Kennard and Nancy Leonard
It was about five or six years ago now, recalls Ian Kennard, bees on Southern Vancouver Island, in the Howe Sound region, and the West End of the Fraser Valley started dying off. On Vancouver Island, South of Campbell River, 70 percent of the honeybee population died. Here on Bowen, bee keepers lost 100 percent of their bees.
Following this “great die-off” the local bee inspector brought Queen bees from Northern California to help Bowen bee-keepers get back to work. The loose-knit Bowen Bee Co-operative started bringing in queens from closer localities, and also made the collective decision to not purchase bees from New Zealand (where many bee starter kits come from).
Since this “great die-off,” Kennard and Nancy Leonard (who started keeping bees about five years ago) have been working hard to raise Bowen bees.
Perpetuating their most successful hives, Kennard and Leonard say they have now raised three generations and are selling bees in the hopes that people interested in expanding their honey operations or who are just starting out, will buy local.
“The survivability of locally raised bees tends to be higher,” says Leonard, explaining that the transport of bees from place to place tends to spread disease and pests that attack bees. “The almond industry in California is heavily dependent on bees being brought in from elsewhere, and we are losing a lot of bees in North America because of it.”
Vivian and David Pearce, Shady Acres Farm
Every year, sometimes twice, Vivian and David Pearce load up their trailer with their meat chickens and transport them to Langley for processing. Many other Bowen Islanders make the same trip, and Vivian Pearce is trying to change that.
“It used to be that the guy in Langley who we all go to would come to Bowen a few times a year,” she says. “But that requires a critical mass of people who are going to use his service. I’ve been calling all the people I know who raise meat-birds, but don’t have enough on board yet to make it happen.”
About half of the chickens the Pearces raises for meat are sold to local families. Shady Acres also sells roughly 10 yards of composted horse manure every spring.
