MATCHMAKING SERVICE: Young Agrarians hook up wannabe farmers with land in Okanagan
An organization that matches young, aspiring farmers to landholders has noticed fewer people are investing in orchards and vineyards in the Okanagan following the industry’s challenges this year.
Young Agrarians is a national organization that educates and helps young people overcome barriers to entry into agriculture. In BC, the group runs a land matching program that connects young and eager farmers to landowners looking for someone to work their property.
Pascale Schittecatte manages the Young Agrarians’ B.C. Land Matching Program and spent time working on farms and wineries in the Okanagan.
She said they usually match about 12 to 20 pairs of farmers and landowners in the valley, and many of them are typically orchards and wineries.
This past winter the Okanagan saw deep freezes which damaged grape vines and significantly reduced yields for many orchards in the area growing soft fruit like peaches, and more recently the BC Tree Fruits Cooperative closed down leaving many farmers scrambling for a way to get their produce to market.
In 2024, so far, Young Agrarians have made 11 matches for 228.25 acres in the region and only one was for an orchard.
“Anecdotally that may be attributed to things like the deep freeze events or the closure of BC Tree Fruits, where folks are just feeling a little bit more nervous about starting a new business or expanding a business when there have been such recent challenges,” Schittecatte said.
She said it’s too early to have any data, or evidence beyond anecdotes from people in the industry, about young people's interest in getting into agriculture in the Okanagan.
READ MORE: Province providing $4M for BC tree fruit growers following co-op shutdown
“We are really boots on the ground,” she said. “We're really connecting with folks and we're hearing directly from the folks that work in the industry.”
Young farmers may be more skeptical about starting a farm, vineyard or orchard in the Okanagan this year, but the land matching program is still an effective resource to help the next generation of farmers.
“In the simplest terms, it's a matchmaking service,” she said. “Where there's a match between the type of land that's available and the type of commercial farming that someone's looking to do, the land matcher will introduce these folks. And then what we can do is when everyone wants to proceed then we sit down and we have collaborative conversations about what type of lease we're going to write up.”
She said the program allows farmers to retire by giving others the opportunity to start their own agriculture business since the biggest obstacle for most people in B.C. is the cost of land.
“In B.C., we have the highest per acre price of farmland in the whole country. That's down on the south coast. It's like $112,000 per acre. And the next highest one outside of BC is $37,000 an acre, and that's like out in Ontario,” she said.
The program also helps connect people with the know-how who are eager to learn about farming. Schittecatte said encouraging young farmers is increasingly important now that less than one per cent of Canadians are farming.
“The number of especially young farmers, so 35 and under, in the industry has been steadily declining, and it is shockingly low right now,” she said. “We've had kind of a shocking decline.”
“We’re now in a position where we may be sort of entering a place where it's a little bit more dangerous in terms of food security,” she said. “But definitely, you know, the barriers to entry have grown and grown and grown,” she said.
Young Agrarians are having a workshop in Kelowna to help educate people about how land matching works and how to access various services which help new farmers. The workshop is at the Okanagan Mission Community Hall from 2 p.m. to 5 p.m. on Oct. 27.
Click here for more information about the workshop and Young Agrarians.
— This story was corrected at 9:13 a.m. on Oct. 29, 2024. A previous version of this story had incorrect numbers on this year's matches.
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