Thank you, Mr. Chairman, and thank you for the invitation.
I have to apologize ahead of time, since I'm a bit unprepared. I received notice of this meeting only yesterday, so I'm a last minute stand-in.
I am a director of the B.C. Grapegrowers Association, and I'm chairing the B.C. Wine Grape Council, which funds and develops research projects for the viticulture and oenology sectors. Today I will make some comments on the environment and land use.
Generally speaking, the grape and wine industry in British Columbia is thriving. While we have some issues in common, especially in terms of the labour shortage, we are doing fairly well. So I'll make some comments of a more general nature, in terms of the environment and agriculture policy, and the way we see that this should be developed for the longer term. If I go over the ten minutes, please shut me up.
In terms of the agriculture policy frameworkand the development of different pillars of interest, I see a bit of an issue, in terms of overlaps among the different categories. It's important to find a message to keep track of this, in order to ensure that these pillars do not operate in isolation.
In terms of the environment, the major challenge will be caused by climate change. We have some fairly accurate climate models, specifically for the Okanagan. We have run three different models with predictions for 2020, 2050, and 2080. Even the most moderate one sees a fairly considerable increase in average temperatures by 2080. So there are definitely going to be some challenges.
One of the major challenges in this area will be water. We live in a semi-arid area, which is a problem we share with many other areas in Canada. We foresee that water will become more and more of an issue, as climate change evolves.
We foresee that spring runoff will happen much earlier. There might be more moisture over wintertime and more accumulation of moisture, but the water will be out of the watershed almost a month earlier than in the past. So we have to find ways of storing more water for agriculture.
Increasing temperatures will also mean higher demand for water. As evapotranspiration of crops increases, we will need to have a fair bit more water available. This is going to be very difficult in areas such as the Okanagan Valley. There are opportunities for increasing upland storage, but they are pretty limited. So it will take a fairly large amount of capital input to improve the water storage capacity in arid areas.
There is very little groundwater that can be drawn from. There is a huge lake here that looks like an enormous water reservoir, but if you draw it down by one foot, it will probably take ten years to replenish that amount of water. You can't look at this as a water reservoir. So we need some other options.
Climate change will also bring changes in disease and pest complexes. We are already starting to see this in the south end of the valley. We brought pests into the grape industry that were unknown ten years ago, and this is probably going to continue. We see an increasing migration of pests from the south, not to mention the importation from other areas through propagating material. Unfortunately, we have not been able to keep these out, despite all the recent quarantine regulations.
Phytoplasma disease has been brought in on French plant material, bois noir, which is a serious concern in the European grape industry. We hope it will not spread; we hope we've caught it in time. But this is an indication of things to come.
Another aspect of climate change, which I personally see becoming a serious issue, is the increasing demand for biofuel. Biofuel production will end up competing on a very large scale with food production in Canada. For the agriculture industry, this is probably good news. I predict that food prices will increase fairly dramatically over the next 20 to 30 years because of that competition. But from a policy point of view, this poses a serious challenge, because food production should come first. It is of primary importance to ensure that food is available for the population at large in the long term. I foresee this becoming a bit of an issue, in terms of planning and competition.
Also, climate change will have an impact on the production capacity in the areas we now depend on for food imports. In British Columbia, I believe the estimate from government is that we produce only 48% of the food that we consume here. A lot of the imports come from California and Mexico at this time. If these areas suffer from a serious setback from climate change, British Columbia will be in really serious trouble. I think the same goes for probably most areas in Canada. This is one area that will need very serious attention from the federal government, from the provincial government, and from local area planning in terms of our food supply.
The federal government probably has, apart from long-term planning, also a responsibility in terms of renegotiating trade agreements, because in the long term, I believe there is a need to protect agriculture, to put tools in place that allow for the support of agriculture production for the supply of domestic food products to the population. I realize this is going to be a huge challenge, and will not be popular to bring to the World Trade Organization. On the other hand, I believe that all other countries will eventually be in the same position as we are, and will have to find ways of ensuring that there is a minimum production of food secured within their own regions and borders.
In terms of land use, land is of course obviously very intimately linked to production capacity. We see more and more competition, especially in terms of real estate development, competition in the use of land. The unfortunate side effect this has brought with it is a substantial increase in land prices, to a point where it becomes almost impossible for young people to get into farming. The succession in the farming sector is going to become a really serious issue, primarily because of the financial issues but also because of less and less available land, especially in British Columbia. I really can't speak for other provinces here, but in British Columbia the estimated amount of land that is arable and could potentially be used for agriculture is in the neighbourhood of 5%, and by now there is about 3% of the land mass used in agriculture in B.C. This is going to become a very serious issue.
Also, going back to biofuel production, there will be more and more demand on land for biofuel production, especially if there are very substantial financial incentives in this sector. I believe this will happen. We see this in the U.S. already, and it is happening around the world. It's a good news and bad news story at the same time. Biofuels can contribute to climate change and the mitigation of climate change through carbon sequestration, although probably not in the form that is being done right now in the U.S. The U.S. is banking primarily on the production of corn, which probably is not the way to go. But there are other crops that are very promising for the future that need just a little bit more research in terms of the breakdown of the cellulose matter, materials like switchgrass, which will probably have a much more beneficial effect in terms of climate change and greenhouse gas mitigation.
The other issue in terms of land use that we cited is there is a large amount of land sitting idle, which has been bought up by developers. We need some policies that will allow this land to be farmed by bona fide farmers. We have some precedents in other jurisdictions where there is a squatter's right, and if any agricultural farmland in an agricultural area sits idle a farmer has the right to occupy it and farm it, without any side effects from the jurisdiction.
Thanks very much for the opportunity. I think I might have overstepped my time.