In December 2025, Fraser Valley farms faced rising flood waters similar to the levels seen in 2021.
Many years ago, the BC Federation of Agriculture had a bumper sticker that read, “Farming is everyone’s bread and butter.” Short and sweet it stated the obvious.
But sometimes the obvious can get lost in politics and other daily concerns.
With these mild days, my mind is beginning to turn to thoughts of spring and, as in the winter of 23/24, something is not right. The weather and the calendar no longer seem in sync.
In my role as BCFGA president, I was at a meeting following that disastrous winter where a federal minister said, “I don’t think we can afford all these climate disasters.” This to me seemed to be a shockingly dismissive response in a province that had just experienced destructive flooding followed by an unprecedented, highly destructive freeze.
We live in a special place on this planet and in this spirit of the obvious our provincial government in 1973 did one of the most courageous things I have ever seen a government do: to enact sweeping land use legislation to protect our bread and butter.
The Agricultural Land Reserve was formed to protect our small but productive ag land base for a time when everyone’s bread and butter may be in peril. A time such as now.
At that time, the thinking was that we can and must afford to support farmers as well, with grower education, adequate crop insurance and other business risk management programs that make our collective food security system resilient.
Obviously, farmland needs farmers. Ironically, the province that now has the most restrictive land-use legislation on the continent also has the lowest level of agricultural support per capita or, by another measure, the percentage of agricultural GDP. The lowest by far.
I’m not sure our secretive and rather selective Premier’s Task Force on Food Security touched on that.
We are often told of the need to be more competitive, which can be a bit of a challenge on an unlevel playing field with open international borders. And, is being competitive the right goal in a country that has the least competitive retail system in the world, according to the Consumer Association of Canada. Perhaps at this stage we should be talking of survival, resilience and resistance.
Our farmland is protected. That costs nothing. Farming and farmers not so much and, as we lose critical mass, our issues take a back seat to other pressing concerns.
Food security needs a refocus by everyone. It’s everyone’s bread and butter.
Peter Simonsen is the past-president of the BC Fruit Growers’ Association, established in 1889.