Thank you. I appreciate being here.
I did have a written submission, which you probably have received by now. I won't deal with the whole thing; I'll just touch on it quickly.
I'm not a farmer. I'm not a young farmer, obviously, but I'm not a farmer at all. I'm just here on the behalf of the potato association.
We're located throughout the province: Fraser Valley, Pemberton, the Kootenays, the Okanagan, the Cariboo, and Vancouver Island. We have 70-plus members, and we're a shrinking organization. We're shrinking because of difficult farming practices today.
I have no statistical charts included in this presentation. I think you have enough of that, given from the earlier presenters.
It's somewhat unique in B.C. that we have only a small portion of land available for farming and we achieve high productivity from that small percentage of land. That land, of course, is expensive--we've heard that--and prices get higher every year. There is a lot of land speculation in this province from offshore and internal speculators, who have money to buy land for purposes that we've already heard about. We are part of that problem because the field crops that we grow mean that we have a lot of land.
We have open-field farming and we have closed-environment farming, which would be the chicken houses and the greenhouses, etc. Of course, some of these are better in terms of attracting young people who are young, highly educated, and technically knowledgeable. There's a lot of that going on.
Today's potato farming and vegetable farming are high-tech for the most part, because you're using the most advanced equipment and the most advanced chemicals and pesticides that you need to use for products, but we're not attracting people. We can't attract people because our costs are exceeding our ability to pay.
That's what it comes down to. That's the bottom line. We just cannot sell. We are competing against some monolithic suppliers out of the U.S. and other areas that simply dictate the pricing on the international commodity market. The buyers today at the stores simply tell you what they're going to pay you. That's based upon the lowest price they can achieve elsewhere, not here.
That price does not cover our cost. That particular issue applies to almost every commodity within B.C. today, other than supply-managed groups. That's the issue, the bottom line.
The age of farmers is up. We know that. I think the average age is roughly 55 in Canada today. I'm not necessarily as concerned about that as I am about the ability to bring people in. I think that age 55 is a really nebulous figure we're chasing. We're saying that we need to get young farmers in, but you have to remember that we just heard from someone here who said that his dad still owns the operation and is still the chief farmer, so he's probably pushing 65 or more. The offspring are coming in, and they're probably 40-plus by the time they actually get to take control of the farm.
It's happening. It's not happening at a younger age, but you do have a lot of younger high-tech people now in the business. They're there working, but we can't continue to bring more in simply because we're not recovering enough money to pay for this kind of thing.
We don't necessarily view aging as a crisis for farming, but more of an active transition brought about by a healthy population as it ages. When healthier older farmers work longer and fewer farms are available, opportunity is reduced for young people, including those outside of farming who can't afford to buy in anyway. There's no means to enter the business unless they can find ways to cover the cost. That's what it comes down to.
There are fewer farms today, but we produce more food today. We've become very efficient over the last 40 to 50 years. Many who do not view farming as a viable business have completely retired and sold their farms to--in a lot of cases--other farmers, who have consolidated in the belief that the consolidation will improve their overall profitability, but they're still finding it difficult.
We've seen this happen throughout the grain industry in Canada, which I spent 35 years in, and I understand that the issue on the prairies has not changed much from what it was years ago.
I think the supply-managed farms have done better in terms of attracting young people, because they can cover their costs to some extent. It's difficult to get into that business today because of the land cost--and I understand that--or the quota cost if it's dairy or that sort of thing. Nonetheless, it can attract young people in. They have some opportunity, and it's getting to be very high-tech.
Field crops are suffering and suffering badly, and that's really what it comes down to today. Field crops are in deep trouble. You've heard this from some of the young farmers today. I was listening to some of your earlier sessions, and the people at this table today have indicated the same thing. So it's really a problem of getting net income, covering your labour costs, covering your field costs, etc., and that's just not available.
I think we really have an issue when it comes down to trying to compete with the crops that are coming in here from the international marketplace. I think the question in many of our minds today is that we don't know if the standards under which we have to put crops out—and they're good standards, they're high standards, and we're meeting them—are on the products that we bring in.
I live in Delta, and I've had people ask me “Why do we not grow more vegetables in Delta? We used to grow a lot at one time.” I say, “Do you see these trains coming in from Roberts Bank? Well, they're bringing in a lot of frozen products from overseas today.” It's one of the reasons for the lesser fields of cauliflower, the lesser fields of broccoli, and those types of things. This is an issue today. We are getting a lot of foods in that come from overseas, and we just cannot compete with these products. But we don't even know what the standards are for those products. We don't know if they meet the standards that we have to maintain. There is a cost for us in meeting those standards, and we can't cover that cost.
I'm going to keep harping on that issue: we cannot cover our costs. That is just the bottom line of this whole issue today. It's just not available to us, and it doesn't matter what we do.
Thank you.