Delta is home to some of the most fertile and productive farmland in all of Canada.
For more than a century, farmers in Delta have provided a wide range of food products for the Lower Mainland and beyond. Agriculture is a substantial contributor to Delta's economy with estimated total gross farm receipts of $300 million, supporting the equivalent of 1,500 person years of employment. But it is an industry that is facing significant challenges that could threaten its economic viability.
The Delta Farmers' Institute (DFI) recently brought together farming and government representatives for a tour that visited several farms to illustrate the relationships between dairy farming and forage fields, irrigation supply and demand, and farming operations and non-farming expansion.
The central issue in the minds of many Delta farmers is whether the industry can continue to produce food for the present and future population in light of two significant factors. The first is the conversion of prime farmland for non-agricultural uses, including highway construction, expansion of the railways, port expansion and industrial activities at Boundary Bay Airport. The second is the increasing damage being caused by waterfowl - including ducks, geese and swans - on the productivity of farmland.
"One of the biggest positives being in Delta is being able to grow forage. Because of our climate, the proximity to the ocean, the sea breeze, we don't have the extreme climates and the fact that we live close to all of our processing plants," said DFI vice-president Clarence DeBoer, owner of Eagleview Farms in East Ladner.
"Those were big advantages to us many years ago, but a few of those advantages have been lost now. We have some of the highest costs for production in the area, our land values are high, the property taxes are high - there are many things that all combine together and add up and puts in place even more challenges for the farming community."
DeBoer said many are seeing their future slowly disappear.
"If this keeps going at this rate and with all the expenses it takes to operate a farm in this area, we are going to be challenged to stay here," he said. "We've seen the alterations of the landscape of the community and we are losing dairy producers at an alarming rate, so the pressures on the existing dairy producers just gets higher and higher. I think people underestimate the value that the forage producers are providing to wildlife."
He said weather has also been a huge challenge.
"Certainly the heavy rains have not helped us the past few years," he said. "The surface on the land gets so matted down and basically sealed up by the waterfowl that the water can not pass through. The weight of the water just sits there and settles the land and then we have to basically start all over again re-seeding the land and trying to re-grow the forage crop again. That means a lot more money, more time and resources."
Waterfowl on the rise
Waterfowl have always been present in Delta, but over the years, due to a number of factors, their presence has increased. "Waterfowl have always been around, but we are certainly seeing them in larger numbers," said DeBoer. "We have a couple of issues here that have been a bit of a sore spot in the farming community: the wildlife sanctuary on Westham Island and the wildlife centre in Surrey - those were added in later years and to us those became an attraction.
They've provided the hotel for them, but we ended up becoming the restaurant. It is a combination of population increase, the growth of the community, the added abundance of birds and the industrialization of the community."
The DFI also points out that as more farmland is converted to non-farm uses, less land is available to support the waterfowl, which means the damage caused to the remaining grass fields will continue to increase.
Mitigation
According to the DFI, Delta is an important feeding and resting area for hundreds of thousands of migratory ducks and geese, which cause significant damage to crops. In attempts to resolve the constant interaction between waterfowl and farming, two mechanisms have been put in place - the establishment of the Delta Farmland and Wildlife Trust and the wildlife damage compensation program through the Ministry of Agriculture.
But the compensation program does not adequately represent the full economic cost to forage producers.
An independent report, cited by the DFI, indicates the compensation paid out to farmers represents less than 40 per cent of the losses sustained by farmers.
Farming practices changing
Farmers have also implemented several changes in farming practices in an attempt to minimize the waterfowl damage, including laser leveling to eliminate ponding on fields and swapping highly nutritious grass crops to low value grass crops.
"It's funny, when we need the rain we don't get it and when we don't need the rain, we get tons of it, so irrigation issues are of a major concern to us," added Deboer. "The financial impact of the waterfowl damage is going to be a difficult challenge to overcome. If society wants to see this continue then we are going to have to do something different, because we as farmers can't be the only ones paying all the bills. For providing green space, providing recreational areas, providing transportation and providing feed for waterfowl, there is no benefit that comes back to the farmer in a form of a monetary value to help offset what the farmer has to put out."
According to the DFI, the future of the dairy sector in Delta is in peril if governments do not react in a meaningful way to address the damage caused by waterfowl.
Action required
The DFI is proposing the establishment of a partnership with the provincial and federal governments dedicated to designing and implementing a strategy, which would address the issues of crop loss and damage caused by waterfowl.
The DFI says the proposed strategy should include:
- Any land use conversion of farmland, for non-farm use, should include an independent agricultural assessment, along with compensation for any loss of farmland.
- The wildlife compensation program needs to be adjusted to include the full extent of the economic losses (crops, soil damage) caused by waterfowl.
- Support for developing new cropping strategies (including improved drainage, development of new forage crops and expansion of regional irrigation systems).
"We can't chase the waterfowl away, but we can't just sit back and let this happen either," Deboer said. "Collectively governments at all levels, the community at large and the farming community have to come together to find solutions. The industry just can't sustain this kind of damage much longer. Farmers are at their breaking point."
