ABBOTSFORD – This fall is likely to bring a push for change to farm classification in BC by members of the agriculture community who want better support for the industry while stopping unwarranted tax breaks.
“It needs to be dramatically changed,” says Chris Bodnar, co-owner of Close to Home Organics in Abbotsford and a member of the Premier’s Task Force on Agriculture and Food Economy.
The task force holds its final meeting on October 7-9, and Bodnar plans to raise the need for change during the discussion about land. He’ll have an ally in task force co-chair Danielle Synotte, executive director of the BC Agriculture Council, who has long advocated for a review of farm classification criteria.
“It hasn’t been really reviewed for a very long time,” Synotte says. “And it hasn’t even really been reviewed under the lens of indexing to inflation. Things have evolved a lot with our agriculture sector over the years since the threshold was established, and we just think it’s time to take a look at the threshold in its entirety.”
The revenue thresholds for farm classification under the province’s Assessment Act were last updated in 1993.
Current thresholds are $2,500 for farms between 0.8 and 4 hectares; $2,500 plus 5% of the actual value for farms over 4 hectares; and $10,000 if the total area of the farm operation is less than 0.8 hectares.
Synotte says BCAC previously raised the issue with the premier in 2023, coinciding with the 50th anniversary of the Agricultural Land Reserve.
Synotte says the $2,500 gross revenue threshold is “pretty low,” even for new entrants into agriculture. But this only applies to those on more than 0.8 hectares.
“The formal ask that we have is we just want the ministry to lead a review on the threshold and how it’s done,” she says. “And that may include the different ways that we do agriculture here in BC. It’s not just one commodity that dominates the province. We have a very diverse agricultural sector; that’s one part of it. And then we have varied sizes of farms.”
Sarah Hirschfeld, an agrologist and co-owner of Golden Way Farm in the Kootenays, sees things differently.
She would like to see anyone who’s growing food have supportive advantages for doing so, including tax breaks.
“I always hear the same thing about ‘Oh, we don’t want people in the Lower Mainland or Kelowna to have an acreage and just put in a row of blueberries and then get a tax break,’ and my personal bent is that if you are growing food, what is so bad about that?” she says. “In fact, they might be able to generate more food than a much larger operation that isn’t worried about it.”
She notes that there is a farm in her region growing food everywhere possible on residential lots of less than one acre. The farmers have raised concerns about the $10,000 threshold, which they currently meet, but may not always be able to achieve.
The residential lot was more affordable than an acreage, which Hirschfeld says few people without inheritances can afford. And even if they can, obtaining labour to cultivate more than two acres is a significant challenge.
“How do you functionally cultivate it without a labour force or huge mechanization which takes the capital-intensive nature of the larger acreages?” she says. “Operating a larger acreage is completely inaccessible for a lot of small-scale people.”
Kootenay and Boundary Farm Advisors, where Hirschfield serves as a project manager and farm advisor, held a webinar about obtaining BC farm status on August 5.
“The intent was to empower farmers and offer an opportunity for discussion,” says Hirschfield, who participated in the webinar.
Participants wanted to understand what makes sense within the system, Hirschfeld says, finding ways to generate an income to both live on and meet classification thresholds while supplying food to their community.
“These folks are not shirking the system,” she says. “They are trying to be productive, contributing farmers, and they’re having to dance around all these hoops that a larger operation just doesn’t.”
Not high enough
Delta farmer Bill Zylmans questions whether 0.8 hectares is the right minimum for the $2,500 threshold.
“That threshold is not high enough,” he says. “In all fairness, can you call yourself a bonafide farmer at two acres? There’s not a greenhouse that can be viable on two acres. I know there’s going to be pushback to that.”
Tax breaks aren’t the only issue; rather, the bigger picture is how farmland is valued and protected through the Agricultural Land Commission. He points to an example where an owner of a small acreage is buying and selling pygmy goats to obtain farm status.
“How do you draw the lines? But two-acres isn’t big enough to [even grow hay] because the people that bought those two acres put their house on half an acre,” he says. “And then they’re going to just try to justify their existence. When you get to a five-acre component, now … you can raise horses, you could have a cow-calf [operation], you can graze donkeys, you can have a herb farm. You have much more viability in structure.”
Zylmans says farm status and the associated tax breaks are one of the biggest issues bothering farmers and industry advocates.
“The ALC is an important part of agriculture for British Columbia,” Zylmans says. “It’s done a great service to agriculture, but … this is probably the one that’s the most irritating. It’s probably one of the most expensive to enforce, and it has the biggest abuse.”
Bodnar agrees it’s a contentious issue, one that needs attention and action now.
“We need to ask some really hard questions, and people are not going to like this. But the reality is we’ve had a sector that has not had a real strategy for quite a number of years,” he says. “Funding is being sprinkled all over the place, like ‘we’ll try this or we’ll try giving a little bit of money there,’ and it’s not generating the results that we need.”
Synotte wants to see BC make the most of productive farmland. She’s aware that BC is filled with many small parcels. But what is small to one person may not be to another. Creating new lines will be controversial regardless of where they are drawn.
“Most of our farms aren’t these huge swatches of land,” says Synotte. “We have lots of small [acreages]. We’re just saying we need to get a commitment to review it.”
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