Hello. My name is Cammy Lockwood. As said, I'm an owner-operator at Lockwood Farms here on Vancouver Island, on the traditional territories of the Hul'q'umi'num'-speaking people.
I am very blessed and honoured to be able to farm this land. My farm is quite small. We have about five acres. We farm vegetables on about two acres. We are also part of the quota supply-managed system. In 2015, we were awarded 3,000 units of quota for egg-laying hens. Since then, we've expanded to two flocks of 3,000 each, so that's about 6,000 laying hens on our farm in a free-range facility.
Our focus, right from the beginning of our farming career in 2010, was really on environmental sustainability and environmental impacts. We chose farming because we felt at that time that it was the most environmentally friendly way we could live. We've always truly believed that we need to be the change we want to see in the world, and we've managed to accomplish that throughout our careers.
What's interesting about our farm is that we feed insect larvae to our birds. We are the only commercial operation in Canada doing that on a commercial scale. It's definitely not without its challenges, in the supply chain and everywhere. It's a pioneering move, and we've felt the effects of that. Honestly, we have felt everything you are talking about. Supply chains, transportation, labour and even meat processing have affected our little five acres here.
When it comes to labour, we have tried so many different strategies. We have teamed up with WWOOF, the worldwide organic farm workers. Essentially, it's a labour trade program, where people choose to stay with us. We provide room and board, and a farming education and experience. They're typically people from developed nations around the world with which Canada has an agreement in place already. We've had many requests from people coming from underdeveloped countries, but, unfortunately, trying to get visas for them to come to Canada is not an option. It is a lot of work for us and something we are not capable of doing on our scale. It's very difficult reading a fair number of heartbreaking emails about their lives and how they want to make a change for the better and become part of Canadian society.
For labour, we've tried that. COVID shut down a lot of borders, at which time we tried employing predominantly local people. We were able to utilize the Canada summer jobs program to do that. Unfortunately, we found that on our scale of vegetable production, it was not a viable option. Essentially, without the Canada summer jobs program, we would have been in the red. We were able to skim through just inside the black. This year, we are hoping to work with local interns.
We have tried on several occasions to go through the temporary foreign worker program, but, again, it's very cost-prohibitive when we have to provide very high-level, rigorously tested housing. When we're working with the buildings we have on the property, it can be very challenging. We also have to show, through the LMIA, that we've tried with local people. We continually try with local people. There's also the cost of airfare. Again, with our small scale, it's difficult to know before they get here whether or not it's going to be an advantage to us.
Housing, of course, is another part of the temporary foreign worker program. In our area and the unit where we would be housing temporary foreign workers, we could recover about $600 a month from them, whereas, given our market here, we can easily rent out the same unit for $1,800 or $1,900 a month. It really draws into question the affordability for us, and it really brings in strong questions as to whether or not vegetable farming is worth our while.
We've also seen some severe challenges when it comes to our egg operation and production. Top Shelf Feeds is our feed supplier. They've been wonderful, always getting us feed throughout all the disruptions we've experienced. They have always been our first call when there is an emergency that hits, but we have seen a huge increase in the cost of feed that has really impacted our bottom line.