The Rural Voice, 1996-05, Page 14LESLIE
HAWKEN & SON
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10 THE RURAL VOICE
Robert Mercer
Fibre versus food
on Vancouver Island
In Ontario the government is
promoting reforestation of rural land
through their "Project Tree Cover"
program. In
BC, on
Vancouver
Island farmers
are fighting
against forest
companies and
what they see as
the lack of
government
concern over
farmlands as
land is being
purchased and
leased for the
production of
hybrid poplar.
The concern
is justified as only three per cent of
the land base on the Island is
classified as agricultural and another
12 per cent is now in parks. In the
productive Cowichan Valley area of
Vancouver Island, 50 per cent of
agricultural land base is already in
the hands of private forest holdings.
Farmers who have to compete for
land with a near explosive
population growth rate on the east
coast of the island, now have forest
interests selling off their five acre
lots at one end of their holdings and
buying good farmland at the other
end on the river flats where soil,
drainage and slope characteristics
make it ideal for short -rotation
intensive culture (SRIC) of these fast
growing poplar hybrids.
Dairy farmers on the island are
especially upset as they are already
facing the loss of the Feed Freight
Assistance (a difference of
$55/tonne against prairie costs) and
uncertainty about the future of the
milk pool, quotas, prices and tariff
issues. The best way to overcome
the feed -price squeeze is to grow
more feed on the farm. The
problem is that there is no land
available, and what there is being
priced out of their reach. Land is
moving out of crop production into
housing, municipal use (garbage
dumps, recreational and school
board), parks, wildlife habitat, small
holdings for horse farms and a lot of
other population pressure needs.
These "needs" have caused a 20 per
cent drop in the agricultural land
assessed under the Agricultural Land
Reserve (ALR) in the Cowichan
Regional District.
Forest production in BC is not
quite the same as in Ontario where
the two "cultures" do not live so
close to each other. This new
approach to the fibre supply problem
in BC is a direct corporate decision
to secure future supplies under
conditions that remove political and
environmental interference. Forest
lands have been reduced by the
establishment of new provincial
parks and the requirements for
stream bank protection. Short -
rotation intensive culture of poplars
is controlled from planting through
cultivation, growth, harvest and in
land ownership. Poplars come to
maturity five times faster than
conifers. The harvest is 10-12 years
after seeding which is at 1,200 plants
were hectare and yield is estimated
at 300-400 cu meters per ha. The
poplar pulp is white and adds
brightness without the uses of
chemical additives. The lease rates
are said to vary from $60 to $130 per
acre per year.
I spoke with one dairy farmer in
the Cowichan Valley who was most
distressed with the forest companies
and governments for allowing
agricultural land to be turned into
non-food producing alternatives. He
was now so uncertain of the long
term future of agriculture on the
Island that he had just returned from
a trip to the mainland to look at
alternative areas to farm.
Vancouver Island only produces
10 per cent of its food needs, and the
ALR, which was formed to protect
farmland from encroachment is
according to this farmer "a bunch of