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Honourable Lana Popham
There are big changes coming for agriculture in BC, thanks to the election of the NDP and the appointment of grape grower Lana Popham as the new Minister of Agriculture.
Popham co-founded and operated Barking Dog Vineyard, the first certified organic vineyard on Vancouver Island. Popham is a long-time advocate of sustainable farming, and after eight years in opposition she is pushing hard for major changes to agricultural policies in BC.
We caught up to Honourable Lana Popham between her many tours of the province. The new Minister says her team is now pushing out major policy changes intended to put more land into production, and make farming more profitable.
O & V
What is your Top Priority as the new Minister of Agriculture?
Honourable Lana Popham
One of the things I’ve been tasked with doing is revitalizing the Agricultural Land Reserve. And that’s a big task but I think we are generally headed in the direction of making it stronger in terms of its regulations and legislation than it’s ever been and taking a look at what I believe have been quite detrimental changes done under the Liberals, like moving it into two zones. So we are going to be starting a consultation process that hopefully will land us in the Fall with legislation.
I know from the work I’ve done as critic for eight years that when the Agricultural Land Reserve was put in it was difficult for the people who were in that reserve to accept that, but over the years people who may have been against it in the beginning they absolutely see the value in it and i think it’s the best land use tool we’ve ever seen in BC.
When the Liberals created that legislation (weakening the ALR) it was devastating to watch. The day that legislation passed I would say was one of the worst days in the Chamber I’ve had in my elected career.
O & V
What do you hope to have accomplished by the end of your first term?
Honourable Lana Popham
The mandate is in three parts, and I now look at the Ministry of Agriculture as three different areas.
One is Grow BC, which is the policies that grow farming and support farming, programs to help young people get on to the land and start farming.
One of the biggest barriers to farming is the cost of the land in BC so it’s about trying to figure out how we grapple with that, looking at co-op models, a leasing system, anything that allows people to get on the land and put it into production.
You can do that but it doesn’t help if you don’t have a good market to sell into. The former government, they looked really closely and spent a lot of money on the international scene, and I’m not saying I disagree with working internationally, but I think they missed the mark on the market here in British Columbia. So, we will have a more domestic focus, and that’s part of our Feed BC policy, which is a procurement policy where hospitals, long-term care facilities, or anywhere that’s spending a lot of money on food, we’re going to be increasing the amount … moving it up to about 30 per cent of food grown and processed in BC.
Right now if we made that a policy we couldn’t do it. We don’t have enough production or processing here in British Columbia right now to get there so it’s really an incentive for farmers to get more land into production because they’ll have a domestic market to sell into and a reason to process products that are specifically around institutional buying.
Once that domestic market is there the possibilities are endless as to how far that will go.
That works in conjunction with the third part of our program which is Buy BC, a marketing program for consumers which was very successful in the nineties but was cut years ago. So we are rolling that out again and people are super excited about it.
So, we are really trying to support farmers, make sure we have a strong domestic market, and make sure we are marketing to consumers, and remember, we have four million people here in BC.
The bigger our domestic market, the more stable will be our international market.
I believe agriculture has the ability to unlock prosperity throughout our entire province, and I’m going to keep saying that every day I’m Agriculture Minister.
O & V
What are your thoughts on the US challenge to our wine industry under NAFTA?
Honourable Lana Popham
We really want to make sure our products have the most opportunities for sales as possible, and when you think of how things have been handled in the past I’m not sure we’ve really been at the table to make sure our interests (in NAFTA) our represented, and the Premier has committed to making sure we’re there.
The wine industry is such an important contributor to our economy; the jobs that come with it, the economic benefits, the agritourism, it’s all extremely important, so we are going to be working closely with Global Affairs Canada to make sure there’s consistency in our liquor policies with respect to our trade obligations, and that’s the work that needs to be done.
it’s causing a lot of stress in our BC wine industry and hopefully it gets hashed out soon.
We have to respect trade agreements, and we will do that for sure, but at the same time we want to be cheerleaders for our products.
O & V
What is the Ministry of Agriculture doing to help farmers and ranchers impacted by the devastating fires last summer?
Honourable Lana Popham
I had a chance to go up to Quesnel (in October) and I got to do a helicopter tour of areas that were so badly hit by the fires.
I know a lot of the ranchers up in the area and I’ve built a relationship with many of them over the past decade, and I thought when I first went up there that I had a pretty good understanding of what had happened …. but being up in the air and seeing a 360-degree view where all you can see is charred forest and barren land … it hits you really hard.
Though I thought I had an understanding of what happened, I’m really glad I did that trip because it is absolutely horrendous what happened up there. I went by a lodge, where the owners were able to save the actual buildings but everything around it was charred.
What attracted people to their lodge was the beauty of the natural area around it being in the middle of nowhere, the access to our wild animals in that area, but now everything is gone. The building is standing but everything is gone.
So you start to put your heads together, y’know, we have insurance programs that can kick in through Agri-Recovery that will help people in some of those areas, but I think there has to be a bigger recovery plan. I think Agriculture has a big role to play in that, probably more of a leader than we’ve been in the past.
Speaking to the Mayor of Quesnel one of the opportunities we flagged is the opportunity for Buy BC to entice people in BC to go up there and see what happened and support their tourism industry by staying and traveling in the area. We can identify areas and routes identified by the region where they’d like people to travel and spend their money at operations where currently it is looking pretty bleak for them right now.
So there is so much opportunity for us to participate in the recovery process in that way. We are also going to launch another Eat - Drink - Local program up in the Cariboo to highlight restaurants up in that area.
In terms of long term recovery we have a huge role to play. The processing opportunities we are trying to incentivize is really about renewal in rural BC. We are going to have a huge focus on making sure agriculture is an economic driver throughout those areas.
O & V
What are you currently planning that will help the fruit and wine grape growers in BC?
Honourable Lana Popham
They (winemakers and growers) have been trying to pass a plebiscite to strengthen the BC Wine Institute, and the day I got elected I started seeing tweets from them saying, just pass the plebiscite and we’ll give you all the credit!
I don’t want the credit, but we have started discussions on that. I met them right after becoming minister, but we’ll meet again before Christmas to decide what we’re going to do on that issue.
The big thing for the tree fruit industry is of course the replant programs. They are counting on support for the replant process, and we are just entering into the budget process on that, but I can tell you I know how important that is. I don’t have any numbers to report until we finish that budget process, but i have a great relationship with the tree fruit industry, and I can say their concerns have absolutely been heard by me, but they’re also very keen on the Buy BC part of our mandate and the Feed BC (program) because, y’know, wouldn’t it be great to have BC apple sauce in our BC hospitals?
We spend a lot of money on hospital food in this province, most of it from outside of BC, and it just makes sense to try to shift that so we can put some money in the farmer’s pockets.
O & V
Any last words?
Honourable Lana Popham
I never want to miss the chance to thank the farmers and ranchers who have trained me over the last eight years. They’ve spent a lot of time with me helping me understand the agricultural communities of this province. Now I’m Minister our communications will continue, but I will never take for granted this opportunity I have.