Fed Minister Meets with Young Farmers in BC
Monday, February 01, 2010

Published in Country Life in BC, January 2010

Why are not more young people pursuing a career in farming?  This question has been on Prime Minister Stephen Haper’s mind so he recently sent Jean-Pierre Blackburn, Minister of National Revenue and Minster of State ( Agriculture) on a cross country tour to have round table discussions with young farmers, teachers, students, and organizations that support young farmers.  The tour included stops in Ontario, Nova Scotia and Saskatchewan.  On Friday November 13, he was in BC to speak with young farmers and students at the University of the Fraser Valley in Abbotsford. 

In an interview after the session, Minister Blackburn noted that his “biggest surprise at this meeting was that the students and young farmers were not aware of all the programs available to them to start farming on their own.”  For example, Farm Credit Canada offers three different loan options to help young farmers purchase or take over existing farms.  These loans include features such as down payments as low as zero or interest only payments.  “The young students eyes were wide open when I told them about these programs.” Minister Blackburn continues, “They asked ‘Why had we not heard about this?”  Minister Blackburn reminded his audience to not worry so much about how much they need to borrow, but rather focus on their business plan and whether they will be able to make the payments.  He also noted that many of the round table participants didn’t know about the insurance programs available through Growing Forward to help farmers get through bad years. 

Myles Andrew of BC Young Farmers Association (BCYF) noted that while programs such as the FCC Transition Loan are a step in the right direction, it is not enough to enable a young farmer to start out. “For a 25 acre piece of bare land in the Fraser Valley, the value is approximately $2 M.  A 10% down payment would still be $200,000, and the payments disbursed over 5 years would be over $30,000 per month. Who can afford to start a farm with these costs?” 

Minister Blackburn spoke about current programs that allow a tax free capital gains allowance of up to $750,000 when transferring farm assets to another family member.  However, he acknowledges that this amount is not keeping up with the price of land and should be increased to further support trans-fer of farm assets to the next generation. 

In his round table discussions Minister Blackburn asked students for their comments about the role of supply management in Canada and the image of agriculture in general. “The students felt it was im-portant to protect supply management in Canada. The statistics also show that the supply managed sectors are attracting more young people than other sectors.” commented Blackburn, “In the supply managed sectors, the average age of farmers is 45, but in the grain sector it is 62.”  In regards to the image of agriculture, he learned from students and teachers that the perceived image of agriculture is preventing many students from pursuing it as a career.  He notes that advertising should be done to help change this image. 

The young farmers felt strongly about this issue, ““We discussed UBC changing the name of its Agri-culture Sciences program to ‘Lands and Food Systems’.  This is a very clear statement of the discon-nect that society has developed between the food they eat and the people that produce it,” remarks Andrew, “Agriculture has turned into a “ it is nice to see from a distance, but I do not want to smell it or see it” stigma. My hope is that the government realizes its significance and are prepared to take appropriate action.”
Minister Blackburn was extremely impressed with the enthusiasm at this round table discussion and noted that the young farmers and agriculture students in BC appeared more optimistic than in other areas of the country. 
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