ALR under attack, and farmers dont care this time.

[dinosaur]

Im not going to change the title of this thread. It is relevant. I am a farmer (and yes my family was farming long before the ALR "was imposed on us") and I know what is going on in the industry. The farmers generaly are not going to fight it this time. Its up to the public now, which is pretty sad from what I see on this forum, by the looks of things the industry is over.

Regarding the 90 year old farmer, which you have now brought up a many times now Lonewolf, you know not of what you speak. All the 90 year old farmers I know love farming. The people who use these aguments are not 90 year old farmers. Stop using trumped up claims of injustice to promote your ideologies. If they wanted to retire they can still sell their farms for a very high value, but most of the 90 year-old farmers I know want die in their fields, not in some home with a security code to keep them inside, they love farming, you dont, so dont speak on their behalf. If their farm is in the hobby-farm range, <10 acres, their land is certainly worth more in the ALR as these are popular tax-shelters for yuppies.

Regarding the 1/4 acre, stick to the topic at hand. Your 1/4 acre is already so small that ALR status is irrelevant (going to subdivide to 1/16ths? what? really what?), and you dont have farm status because you are not a real farm, deal with it. You have lost nothing, and your claim is irrelevant to the topic of this thread. There is also more to this that you are not telling us, for instance how you ended up with a quarter acre within the ALR if this was not severed from a farm at the owners request so you or the previous owner have probably already got to have your cake and eat it too.

I want to caution the public from taking a superficial look at this. The orchard industry is more profitable than people think, and probably more than the grape and wine industry in real terms. We say its all doom and gloom, but this is part of a strategy to get subsidies most of which go to making the cost of your food cheaper. The grape industy may look successful, but this is a strategy to sell wine and a reflection of its status as a prestige investment, and instead of subsidies gapies get market protection which drives up the cost of foreign wine and makes them half-competitive. This is a town that for the most part takes in each others washings, farming is one of the few industries we have that creates any wealth. Farmers bring in hundreds of millions of dollards into the valley every year; much of that from abroad, and we create good jobs too, not that the locals know it, but a lot of people are making 150$-500$/day spring through fall doing contract work in orchards.

The title of this thread is significant and has consequences. Farmers have been the traditional defenders of the ALR, even at our own expense because we believe in what we are doing. But this is not going to happen this time, the current government is simply hostile to farming, and the vocal public has become so divided and zealotized over GMO, organic, fair-trade, Monsanto, biodynamic, permaculture etc... that they might be regarded as insane and effectivly hostile to farming too, so farmers are ambiguous; Its not easy to keep going when you think the world is against you. I wanted the public to be aware that this time its up to them. If you care write to politicans and say so. Thats all.

[LANDM]

Im not going to change the title of this thread .

I think they were referring to your typo....ARL instead of ALR.

One comment I will make that you may not recall....don't know your age or involvement in agriculture in the past....farmers fought *against* the implementation of the ALR by the NDP. It was the only time most of them ever picked up a picket sign in there lives.
The best one, I remember, was "Stupid, Stupider, Stupich", referring to Dave Stupich, the Ag minister at the time.

[1nick]

Im not going to change the title of this thread. It is relevant. I am a farmer (and yes my family was farming long before the ALR "was imposed on us") and I know what is going on in the industry. The farmers generaly are not going to fight it this time. Its up to the public now, which is pretty sad from what I see on this forum, by the looks of things the industry is over.

Regarding the 90 year old farmer, which you have now brought up a many times now Lonewolf, you know not of what you speak. All the 90 year old farmers I know love farming. The people who use these aguments are not 90 year old farmers. Stop using trumped up claims of injustice to promote your ideologies. If they wanted to retire they can still sell their farms for a very high value, but most of the 90 year-old farmers I know want die in their fields, not in some home with a security code to keep them inside, they love farming, you dont, so dont speak on their behalf. If their farm is in the hobby-farm range, <10 acres, their land is certainly worth more in the ALR as these are popular tax-shelters for yuppies.

Regarding the 1/4 acre, stick to the topic at hand. Your 1/4 acre is already so small that ALR status is irrelevant (going to subdivide to 1/16ths? what? really what?), and you dont have farm status because you are not a real farm, deal with it. You have lost nothing, and your claim is irrelevant to the topic of this thread. There is also more to this that you are not telling us, for instance how you ended up with a quarter acre within the ALR if this was not severed from a farm at the owners request so you or the previous owner have probably already got to have your cake and eat it too.
I want to caution the public from taking a superficial look at this. The orchard industry is more profitable than people think, and probably more than the grape and wine industry in real terms. We say its all doom and gloom, but this is part of a strategy to get subsidies most of which go to making the cost of your food cheaper. The grape industy may look successful, but this is a strategy to sell wine and a reflection of its status as a prestige investment, and instead of subsidies gapies get market protection which drives up the cost of foreign wine and makes them half-competitive. This is a town that for the most part takes in each others washings, farming is one of the few industries we have that creates any wealth. Farmers bring in hundreds of millions of dollards into the valley every year; much of that from abroad, and we create good jobs too, not that the locals know it, but a lot of people are making 150$-500$/day spring through fall doing contract work in orchards.

The title of this thread is significant and has consequences. Farmers have been the traditional defenders of the ALR, even at our own expense because we believe in what we are doing. But this is not going to happen this time, the current government is simply hostile to farming, and the vocal public has become so divided and zealotized over GMO, organic, fair-trade, Monsanto, biodynamic, permaculture etc... that they might be regarded as insane and effectivly hostile to farming too, so farmers are ambiguous; Its not easy to keep going when you think the world is against you. I wanted the public to be aware that this time its up to them. If you care write to politicans and say so. Thats all.

It's 3/4 and that's my point ALR is irrelevant to my property I wasn't looking for farm status,but to get my property out of the ALR,so I could subdivide and build a business.I think the ALR is needed,but not for little pissant properties like mine.
Yes my house is the original farm house to the 40 or so acres that is still ALR,it was sectioned off decades ago at no benefit to me other than I got to buy a nice place with potential.Potential mired in ALR crap.

[dinosaur]

So how does the ALR burden your title?

[1nick]

http://www.alc.gov.bc.ca/legislation/Re ... oc_Reg.htm

[LoneWolf_53]

Regarding the 90 year old farmer, which you have now brought up a many times now Lonewolf, you know not of what you speak. All the 90 year old farmers I know love farming. The people who use these aguments are not 90 year old farmers. Stop using trumped up claims of injustice to promote your ideologies. If they wanted to retire they can still sell their farms for a very high value, but most of the 90 year-old farmers I know want die in their fields, not in some home with a security code to keep them inside, they love farming, you dont, so dont speak on their behalf. If their farm is in the hobby-farm range, <10 acres, their land is certainly worth more in the ALR as these are popular tax-shelters for yuppies.

Clearly your bias is clouding your ability to reason.

Also I digress but it's you who know not of what you speak.

I pay attention to the news all the time, and unlike your veiled inference that I pulled this thought out of my hind quarter, I used it because I noted several times over the last couple of years, stories in the news where some old farmer, who had no living relatives, and whose health had declined, to where he wasn't physically able to perform the necessary functions to operate a farm any more, wanted to live out his days in his home, but ALR rules made it next to impossible because he/they couldn't keep their home, and sell off the farm.

I know for a fact this happens because one of the examples was an old Japanese fellow, who had the cherry orchard at the base of MacKenzie Road in Rutland, and yeah he was in his nineties.

You are either running in circles that contain some extraordinarily healthy, octogenarian and older, farmers, if you think they can all work until the day they drop, or are just in denial as to one of the less admirable drawbacks to having ones land subjected to ALR regulations.

What these farmers do indeed want, is to live out their days on the land that they worked, and put all their hearts and souls into for generations, rather than be shipped off to some care facility, simply to observe the subsequent owner successfully get the lands out of the ALR and make a killing, as I've also seen happen a few times.

That old Japanese cherry farmers land is now a subdivision.

[grammafreddy]

Sounds like Mrs Frank and the Ogies on Rutland Road.

[LoneWolf_53]

Sounds like Mrs Frank and the Ogies on Rutland Road.

Ogies are definitely a good example too, yes. They're getting up in years, and the kids have no interest in carrying on the agricultural work. Most of the current generation have this huge aversion to anything physical, or that gets their hands dirty.

They did build a nice new shack behind the old one, so who knows maybe they hope to subdivide one day.

[Symbonite]

NDP / Liberals / Next politcal party.. it doesn't matter. The ALR is very important and shouldn't be removed.

It is a free country and that farmer that purchased that land knew when he purchased the land that it had restrictions. If he doesn't want to abide by the rules now, he shouldn't of purchased it. Paving over viable farming land is a terrible idea and people all over will suffer from the loss of good farm land.

If the ALR does restrict this, then maybe we should change the rules and have the government purchase the land from the 90 year old farmer that can't sell it to prevent hte loss of this land.

Except my parents...they had an orchard down in Osoyoos when the ALR was implemented and they had no choice in that fact. they got out in 1996 when the fruit market was going south and getting into other ventures was still cheap.

But imagine if they were able to subdivide the 19 acres. Ever since...the NDP put that in...my parents have never voted for them ever again.

[LoneWolf_53]

Except my parents...they had an orchard down in Osoyoos when the ALR was implemented and they had no choice in that fact. they got out in 1996 when the fruit market was going south and getting into other ventures was still cheap.

But imagine if they were able to subdivide the 19 acres. Ever since...the NDP put that in...my parents have never voted for them ever again.

Exactly, and there are many many examples of such cases, yet a few dolts for some reason or other refuse to acknowledge this.

The argument the poster used, that people knew when they bought the land, the restrictions that were on it, are conveniently forgetting that those restrictions were applied to all farm land in the ALR including that of people such as your parents, and many others who had it imposed on them.

It's easy for them to spout off though because likely they aren't even farmers, but rather armchair experts as is the case more often than not.

Something that some might take into account also, is that food can be grown in greenhouses too, and in fact many tomatoes are grown that way. My point being a greenhouse need not be in designated ALR land, so suggesting for drama's sake that we're somehow headed for starvation without the ALR, is silly.

[hobbyguy]

Symbonite - What you describe with your parents is exactly why the ALR was put in place. To prevent willy-nilly chopping up of arable land. And I wonder what that 19 acres would worth with today's wine industry????

By the way, there were folks who made a lot of money on the ALR implementation. My dad had purchased a farm in Surrey for peanuts, and had it rezoned industrial (for legitimate, not speculative purposes) before the ALR came in. You can imagine the profit he made when industrial land started to get scarce after the ALR came in.

[Symbonite]

Symbonite - What you describe with your parents is exactly why the ALR was put in place. To prevent willy-nilly chopping up of arable land. And I wonder what that 19 acres would worth with today's wine industry????

By the way, there were folks who made a lot of money on the ALR implementation. My dad had purchased a farm in Surrey for peanuts, and had it rezoned industrial (for legitimate, not speculative purposes) before the ALR came in. You can imagine the profit he made when industrial land started to get scarce after the ALR came in.

yes you could do that in Surrey or saw that chopping it up in that area would be better to do but at the time in Osoyoos you would have been crazy to subdivide at that time because houseing or industrial (which does not exist in Osoyoos at that time) was not a issue as it is now so they would have gotten nothing from splitting the land vs using it as a Farm.

My dad was not a dumb farmer. he saw what went on and gambled....it was first that the packing house said get rid of all your soft fruit in the 80's there is no money in that and plant apples. My dad ripped out most of the apple trees in the farm and planted soft fruit. Fast forward 5 years around early 90's the apple market crashed cause the washington apple dump and the people that had soft fruit was making a killing why, because of the shortage of farms doing it.

That goes with the Vineyard. My dad said everyone that went to put the vineyard in was not seeing the bigger picture. They only way you make money in a Vineyard is if you had a actual winery. because if you are planting a vineyard and selling the grapes as a third party your better make sure you grapes are top notch because if the winery that your contracted to sell to says no to your crop...good luck trying to sell it. Happens all the time. Thats why there are still Fruit farms around because of the shortage of fruit and the prices have gone up becasue the other farms turned into vineyards.

That Farm was in my family from 59-96. Imagine buying land and then 15 years later being told you cant do nothing but farm on your land angry you would be.

[hobbyguy]

Actually, the reverse was true before the ALR. My dad and his neighbor in North Vancouver both had small farms. Neither of them wanted to subdivide, they just wanted to keep their small farms as small farms. Then they got a notice from the District of North Vancouver that their land had been designated for residential, and their tax assessments were going through the roof, and a new road was going in, and they would have to pay development charges for each potential lot for the road, which was to be built on land that they were expropriating at farm land value from my dad and the neighbor.

They tried to fight it, but got absolutely nowhere. My dad was forced to subdivide of a few lots and sell them just to pay the development charges. His neighbor gave up, and sold to a property developer that had been after him for a couple of years (and this is really stinky -had "friends" on the council).

The same stunt was being tried on another small farm in the area, but then the ALR came in. That family was able to keep the farm for another twenty years, and only sold it because none of the family wanted to keep operating it as a farm. At that time, the ALR released the farm from the ALR.

What I'm trying to illustrate is that ALR also has the benefit of preventing developers (and "lobbied" councils) from forcing farmers off their land. That was a surprisingly common practice in the 1960's.

If the ALR were to go, how many Okanagan orchardists and smaller farmers would be "back door" forced off their land?? Hard to say, but I bet there would be a fair number that would get taxed off their land...

[dinosaur]

I know for a fact this happens because one of the examples was an old Japanese fellow, who had the cherry orchard at the base of MacKenzie Road in Rutland, and yeah he was in his nineties.

You are either running in circles that contain some extraordinarily healthy, octogenarian and older, farmers, if you think they can all work until the day they drop, or are just in denial as to one of the less admirable drawbacks to having ones land subjected to ALR regulations.

What these farmers do indeed want, is to live out their days on the land that they worked, and put all their hearts and souls into for generations, rather than be shipped off to some care facility, simply to observe the subsequent owner successfully get the lands out of the ALR and make a killing, as I've also seen happen a few times.

That old Japanese cherry farmers land is now a subdivision.

Thats like the 5th time you have used the example of "the 90 year old farmer". Dont you have anything to say yourself? Why do you feel so compelled to speak on behalf of people you dont even know the names of. Do you really think the farmer in your example wanted a subdivision, or was that the developer? Even the fact that this happened would seem to undermine the concept that you are trying to promote which is that the ALR is opressive.

1. People who bought land before the ALR was brought in bought it for peanuts and earned a lot of equity (50k-250k and acre for land now.). They are not hard done by, they have done well.
2. There is nothing stopping farmers from selling their land under the ALR.
3. After the height of the apple crisis a few years ago many orchards went up for sale: all of them sold quickly, asking prices did not go down at all, though many took offers they wouldnt have before the crisis.
4. The govt has already allowed farms to subdivide to sizes where they are not viable on their own; these lots (>10acres) have become lucrative tax-shelters and are much more than they ever would be.
5. If ALR land was free for developers land values would initially collapse; the farmers who you suggest are hard done by would actually have to sell their land for less; its developers who might profit, not farmers.
6. The assuption that removing the ALR will make everything possible is a falacy. Even without the ALR, or perhaps particularly without the ALR, there are still zoning laws which developers will have to get past.

Everything you are suggesting about the ALR being a hardship for farmers are actually not, they are hardships for developers. Developers are the ones who MIGHT profit from removing the ALR, and not as much as they think. Most golf-courses go bankrupt. There are a lot of bozos out there with dollar signs in their eyes who will destroy this land for nothing. There is lots of land all over that could be used, but we wont get this land back.

Farmers have been the most vocal critics of the ALR. They do tend to be a populist lot, and they are the ones concerned by these laws. But if you can see past the venier these complaints directed at the ALR not very thinly veiled appeals for subsidies (The US sector, our main competition, is far more heavily subsidiesed than our own and its not easy to remain competative when paying canadian wages and everyone shops at Walmart.). Farmers want to farm, including the elderly farmers I know who refuse to stop; spin that into whatever you want, I hope I die under a tree too and not locked in some home I pay a fortune for.

People who own farms today are more than just farmers, this is a reality I have to accept. Particularly when land prices are so high, there is little hope they will ever pay off the land with procedes from farming. So farmers are neccessarily speculators too. The current government is simply hostile to farming; despite the geographic complexity and diversity of our province we put back less of agricultural GDP back into the industry than any other province. The public is so wrapped up in GMOP, Monsanto, fair-trade, biodynamic, monoculture, organic, factory-farm, permaculture, nonesense that they dont understand the nuts and bolts and for all intents and purposes might be considered hostile to farming too. So I dont blame farmers if they want to give up. But this goes beyond left or right, this is about good government, being pragmatic, and not selling out the province for a quick buck. We have two of the best sites for growing fruit in the world, permanent economic industries which export a fortune in goods and bring money into the Okanagan when not many other industries do, and we wont get this land back.

We have given up our manufacturing industry out east for the oil industy (From which the increased dollar also cost agriculture 30%.). Now we are giving up another viable long-term industy for a quick buck. I hate to see the future when the oil is gone and we have nothing left in the way of industy to create wealth for our decendents. When this happens the developers and speculators will not be there for us; they will be off to some other wealthy place to ruin their economies.

[LoneWolf_53]

The current government is simply hostile to farming; despite the geographic complexity and diversity of our province we put back less of agricultural GDP back into the industry than any other province.

Might that be because comparing BC to for example Saskatchewan, which is basically one big field, is another great example of apples and oranges?

I'm guessing Saskatchewan exports less lumber than BC, if you get my drift.