John Espley: Alright. So it's after hours. Shouldn't we have party hats and drinks in hand?

John Juricic: That's great. For those participating in this, and there's at least 40,000 of you online, of course there's a chat feature. Please participate with us. We would love to chat with you and take any questions.

Okay. What is this? Why are we doing this? Sidney Breakfast Club is a monthly industry networking group that meets out on the peninsula. That group is getting very robust, and quite a few people show up on a monthly basis. We're now averaging 60-70 people, and we're chatting all about industry-related activities, specifically in the last six months around tariffs.

The meeting time is an hour and a half. Between everyone eating, introducing themselves, and the speakers, there's really not much time to get into the meat and potatoes of some of these topics. We decided to set this up and start to get into the meat and potatoes of key industry issues, not only on the peninsula but lower Vancouver Island.

Their last meeting, we had South Island Prosperity Partnership representatives talking about their survey work over the last six months, summarizing their findings. It was interesting that there wasn't a lot around food security or agriculture, which was brought up by you, John, and I thought that would be a great topic to start this series of after-hours, talking about food sustainability.

Food security and, most importantly, the economics of agriculture and food security are ongoing concerns. There's actually no better speaker than John Espley. John, why did I pick you to do a sales job for me?

John Espley: Well, first off, I can't provide the meat, but I might be able to provide the potatoes. The reason John has asked me to speak is because I'm one of the co-founders of the brand new Blenkinsop Community Agricultural Centre, which, as far as we can find, is the first of this size combination community garden and community farm plot, privately funded enterprise in Canada. We can't find anything exactly like this in Canada. There are small developers who will let their land go for use for gardens until they get a development or there's community gardens funded by municipalities, even regional districts and provinces that get into larger farms. But to have a combination like this, of its size, and be privately funded with no taxpayer dollars supporting it, is unusual.

John Juricic: John, what exactly is it? Explain to us, especially for people like me who don't know what you're doing. I love the name. I know it has to do with agriculture.

John Espley: My business partner and I bought 14 acres of farmland in the Blenkinsop Valley, which is a prime example of urban farming. We have some great farming in that valley, right in the center of Victoria. That's one unique piece. Most of the community gardens are done on land that's not proper agricultural land, as opposed to what we've created, which is on farmland that has been a farm for generations.

We've bought the 14 acres and divided it up. Our first go-around, we have 470 community garden plots of five foot by ten foot each. Then we have a number of one-eighth, one-quarter, or one-half acre plots for those who want to farm and do more with what they're growing.

John Juricic: Where did you determine there was demand for this, John? Are people beating down the doors to get these plots?

John Espley: My business partner owns a company that is on one corner of our property and services the plots with their soils and composts and other supplies. He's had that for a while, working with the owner of the agricultural land where he's sitting. We talked about what more we could do with this land because the owner wasn't making any money and wanted to retire. He was leasing it out, but really wasn't making any money, barely paying the taxes.

So what could we do better? We looked into how to turn this into a community amenity and investigated community gardens in Victoria and around the province. Hundreds are on the waiting list. One large one that we worked with in Vancouver has a four-year minimum wait list just to get a small community garden plot. For farmers, there are programs that'll help match farmers with land, but you have to have experience. Where do you get experience? With us, you can rent the eighth, quarter, or half acre. We don't demand that you have experience. On top of that, we provide a lot of the equipment for a service fee. We bought a tractor and all the equipment, and they pay us a small fee. We come out and do that, so they don't have to invest the tens or hundreds of thousands that we did. They can get started, and if they want to grow, now they can say they have experience.

John Juricic: Thank you very much. Such a great service for the community. Let's start getting into some of the issues around food security. First, there's a perception by people—I'm going to assume I don't know anything about this topic. I'm going to ask some very on-the-street type questions.

Shawn O'Hara: When I first heard the term food security, I thought it talked about fencing.

Shawn O'Hara: I spent my teen years in the Fraser Valley and farm country. I thought, food security—yeah, you need an electric fence.

John Juricic: When I drive my vehicle to the ferry, I live in town, and when I start to hit the peninsula, it looks like there's a ton of land. If you even get off the highway, there's a bunch of farmland out there. My gut sense is that there's so much food being farmed that there's enough for all of us. I've since learned over the years that's not the case. Can you give us a sense of the practicality of land availability, the farming, and how much food is that producing for us in terms of percentages?

John Espley: The stats and who you talk to vary, but my research is anywhere from a high of 10% to as low as 4% of the agricultural land on Vancouver Island is actually used for farming to feed our people. The government's done a great job in protecting the land, but it's not being utilized to the extent that it could be. That's problem number one. That's part of what we discovered. The land—one crop, or yes, we need to feed our animals hay, but we can't grow hay on everything. You and I can't eat hay. We have to have a variety of products. Plus, when you have a variety of products, it also helps the land over time. But commercial farming—this is where you get the difference between large commercial farms and small individual farms. There's a benefit to both.

We need both. Right now, we don't really have a lot of both. The smaller farms that are producing a lot of the agriculture locally are, for many reasons—economic, government, you name it—struggling. We need to help that. The other thing to realize is, especially for us on the island, a lot of our produce comes from California. For the island, it's even more important. We get everything by boat. If there's a problem, a strike, bad weather, whatever it is, we have two to three days' supply of food. We used to have things. Let's go onto the meat part of the discussion. I remember in Langford, there used to be the lily processing; we used to process a lot of beef on the island. All that moved to the lower mainland or Alberta and beyond, to centralize, which commercially I get, but it doesn't help us for local food security. If something cuts us off, you and I are eating hay.

John Juricic: Let's just repeat this. There's a sense that the land being farmed could sustain food sources for Lower Vancouver Island or the island. That is a myth. You're telling me that's a myth. Of the land available that's currently being farmed, about 10% of it is actually food for the region, or are they shipping 90% of it out?

John Espley: Not a lot. We don't grow a lot on the island that's getting shipped out. There's a lot of people more involved in farming than I am, but we don't grow a lot that's being shipped out necessarily. Other than, I believe, dairy gets shipped out a lot. But on the produce, you just don't see it. There are not a lot of farms on the island producing tons and tons of agriculture. You don't see the huge orchards like in the Okanagan. There are some that do, but not to any large extent. The problem is we're just not growing enough here on the island.

John Juricic: This is fascinating and disturbing. During COVID, some of us had online webinars, and the statistics you just conveyed are exactly what we heard back then. There is a myth that the island has food sustainability. The business models around agriculture and creating food are starting to not work. We've had folks, farmers own lots of land, especially on the peninsula for maybe 20, 30 years, maybe more.

The model for that is now broken because of growth, population, and the need for housing. Because of the high demand for housing, land, even if it's in the agricultural land reserve, is starting to get very expensive. As these farmers get into retirement age and think about moving this land or selling it, young people who wish to be farmers cannot afford the land. So we're stuck with a gap in which the land simply won't be used for agriculture.

John Espley: Absolutely. Some of the things we run into, and you see, the Agricultural Land Reserve or Commission has made some adjustments to their credit, where you'll see farmland with some sort of retail operation in a corner of it. The best example is a winery. You have a huge orchard, but on one part of it, you have a winery. Not only are you producing, but you're selling, doing tours, and all the tourism helps pay for those orchards. Without the winery, it's a lot tougher. You don't see very many that don't have their own winery on site for that reason. Even in the Okanagan, you'll see all the fruit stands. The Agricultural Land Commission will allow that because it helps the farmer pay for the land.

If you're not selling in bulk, you have to be pretty large to sell in bulk to the grocery store chains or distributors. That's one piece, but it's very limited. We'll get into this in a minute. We have a problem with that. Also, we don't have generations doing farming anymore. We don't have young people coming into farming. Most people, especially younger people, think their food comes from the grocery store. It has to start somewhere in the ground. That's something that our project hoped to teach, and it's already happening. We've had tours of high school kids, all these new growers coming in who want to learn and understand how to grow food. We've done a great disservice in society; we've let the farmers down. Just like we talk in the Sidney Breakfast Club about trades and tech, same thing—trades, tech, and now agriculture. Agriculture needs to be promoted.

John Juricic: Through this series of questions and framing, we've come down to your business now.

We've determined that the island is not food sustainable for the long term. We've determined that the existing processes by which we create food through agriculture are challenged for a lot of economic reasons. It would appear to me, John, that what you're doing—there should be a hundred Blenkinsop Community Agricultural Centres where people might be creating their own food. Someone who can't afford 20 acres in North Saanich because that costs millions might be able to afford a quarter acre on your piece of land. Tell us the barriers and challenges you've had to opening what should be a slam dunk business considering the environment.

John Espley: One of the things you didn't mention was, because of density, all the small townhomes and condominiums—these people don't even get a garden. Even with farm plots, a five foot by ten foot can grow enough produce for a couple to feed themselves for a long time. You could feed families in just a couple of square meters of potatoes. People don't understand how much you can grow if it's done right. When we have families that have one or two, or some of them four, five-by-ten plots, they can feed their families because they don't have the land.

They live in condos or apartments or are retired. We have some retirement home folks. I love it. When you get to the farmers, the eighth and quarter acres, now you can feed multiple families or groups, or it's a business. What if we've got volunteers or people growing food that they can feed people fresh produce? We're always counting on the grocery stores, which do all they can. What about having another access to fresh produce?

The challenges we've run into are governmental approvals. As I mentioned, the Agricultural Land Commission and Agricultural Land Reserve—what we're doing doesn't really come under their mandate. It's confusing for them. That's a challenge because we're not your typical farm. The latest thing we're dealing with is taxes. Apparently, we're no longer a farm, even though everyone's growing there.

It's not the fault of the staff in the various levels of government. It's the way we've designed the program. In our case, we didn't think we'd be doing this, but we're breaking ground. We've created something new where they're going to have to create new rules.

John Juricic: Partner, John, for the viewers, sorry, you're freezing. We're on a Zoom call transmitting live on YouTube. Inevitably, we're going to get some bandwidth issues. I'm sorry about that. We were quite smooth up until a few minutes ago. How about you start again, John. Sorry.

Shawn O'Hara: Now I've really lost them. I got a message that my net connection was unstable and I'm hardwired, so it could be things happening. I've been posting into the chat some things that have come up, like John's website, the link to the Agricultural Land Commission, and the link to the Sidney Breakfast Club.

John Juricic: Okay. Well, this is excellent experience. I think I got John back. Sorry, John.

John Espley: I hear you, but you're frozen.

John Juricic: Okay.

John Espley: Now you're moving. There we go.

John Juricic: We're at about the 20-minute mark. I'm going to help out Zoom and John, if you could do the same. I'm going to hide myself here. Oops. Can you guys hear me?

Yes.

Well, I've hidden my video. We're having some technical difficulties. I want to bring myself back. How do I do that?

Shawn O'Hara: I'm going to go to hide self-view, so you should still see me. Show self-view, okay?

John Juricic: I've lost myself.

John Espley: It's just become a radio program.

John Juricic: John, can you hear us?

John Espley: I can hear you.

John Juricic: Okay. Well, that's why we do this. I can hear you. Let's pick up where we were, John. You were explaining the mechanics of getting a plot and some of the challenges that government gave you.

John Espley: First off, being designated a farm for the tax credits and everything that come with it—we want to charge folks as little as we can. This is a funny thing, and as a businessman, I should have known better. I assumed we would qualify because we were growing on the land and meeting all the criteria, but apparently we don't qualify as a farm for the tax credits.

Right now, the system is you have to sell everything that you're growing. Someone can grow a bit of hay on their land, and as long as they meet the dollar criteria, they get the tax credit. But if you get four or five families together and they get a few acres to feed their families, but they don't sell to anyone, they feed themselves—guess what? Based on that criteria, you don't get tax credits for growing on the land. We're not helping people to grow. Food security—we need to do everything we can to help people to grow. We are working with the various levels, but it's a struggle because we are unique. We're creating a new system.

Since launching this, and you have to understand, our people have only been growing since May, so we're brand new. I have had hundreds of calls and people from all over the province—the CRD, up as far north as Prince George, all over the lower mainland—that want to talk to us and tour our property, saying, "We have access to land, or we're looking to get access to land and we want to do what you do." It's a shame because I'm telling them, "I'll tell you everything we've done, but hold off until we solve these issues." Even the small things, like putting in a parking lot. We have all these people farming and gardening, but they have to have a place to park. That's a challenge because we're taking that little bit of land out of the Agricultural Land Reserve. We're going through the approval process and still dealing with that. Putting in a driveway was a challenge because the agricultural land didn't have a driveway, so we had to have a place to drive into the parking lot. I don't even want to tell you how much that cost me through the municipality.

John Juricic: So it sounds like we need to change things. It sounds like the municipalities and even government legislation need to catch up with reality.

John Espley: The funny thing is, all the politicians at all levels are loving this. They said, "Can we have this yesterday?" The problem is the bureaucracy. It's the process that's been set up that doesn't allow for who we are. We have to fix that.

John Juricic: There's a comment in our chat. Philip mentioned something called OUR EcoVillage in Shawnigan Lake, which has a wealth of experience with zoning changes to facilitate agriculture. Are you aware of municipalities, just on the island, that are more friendly to rezoning or helping us move to a more accommodating process to achieve food sustainability?

John Espley: I haven't looked into every municipality because I was only focused on our own. But from what I'm getting, I'm hearing more comments from others wanting to do this, and they're talking to their municipality.

Other ones, not Saanich where we are, but other ones. The answer is no, you can't do that. For what we're doing, we don't need rezoning. It's already Agricultural Land Reserve land and we're growing on it. We don't need rezoning. We just need them to look at it and treat it as a farm, as if we were growing 14 acres of hay. Just treat it the same way, please.

John Juricic: Let me get this straight. You have acreage, and its sole purpose is to grow food. There's nothing else going on. Maybe you'll set up a small retail one, but right now, its only purpose is growing food. My understanding is that if you have land that grows food, you are a farm. But because you have this broken into little plots, making it more affordable and convenient for people to grow their own food, you are not categorized as a farm in the municipality's point of view. Is that correct?

John Espley: Correct. It's not directly in the municipality's point of view. It's in BC Assessment, which the municipalities use for tax purposes. Now, the municipality can make up and adjust taxes, but because we're not a not-for-profit, there are all these little loopholes. A not-for-profit gets looked at differently than a for-profit. A not-for-profit would have a hard time coming up with the dollars and doing this deal that we've done.

So that's another challenge. That's why I say we don't fit in the boxes. I hate boxes because we don't fit in any of them.

Shawn O'Hara: These are not loopholes; these are barriers. A loophole should allow you to do something, not stop you.

John Espley: People need to understand that the way BC Assessment has it set up right now, depending on the size of the land, there are criteria for how much you must sell. The smaller your piece of land, the higher the percentage you must sell. They don't want people just having land and saying, "Oh, I sold a hundred bucks, it's a farm." That's not right either. So the smaller it is—for someone with two acres or less, you have to sell $10,000 in produce to qualify as a farm under BC Assessment. Some of our people may or may not sell, but even if they did, they'd have to apply themselves. We can't apply as the landowner, as the people who spent all the money so they can grow. These are the challenges. The system doesn't recognize who we are. Someone coming in and buying this land—right now, the CRD is trying to create farms.

For those not in Victoria, that's our Capital Regional District, which includes all 13 municipalities, and is trying to create farmland for people to access. They've been at it for ten years and haven't been able to make it happen, though they're close. They've come to us and said, "We love what you're doing." Although the idea has been years in the making, we did this within one year, putting up our own money and time. Why are we not encouraging others to do this? Every time my partner and I walk out and our gardeners and farmers are there, they're bending over backwards to say thank you. Sometimes my partner is in tears because they make him feel so wonderful for doing this. Why are we not encouraging this behavior? I'm not trying to lay blame; the system needs work.

John Juricic: That's why we're doing this—to get the message out into the community. Luckily, with technology, we'll be able to spread this message across social media. Your message around government, please make this easier. This is simply logical policy development. It's not like changing density massively on a plot of land that's been farmed for a hundred years. This is land that is already or was being farmed, now being made more efficient and adjusting to the way we live now.

Can you please make that a little easier? The demand is there. Have I captured that correctly, John?

John Espley: Yes. To the government's credit, I understand we don't want people just buying Agricultural Land Reserve land and putting the one or two houses they're allowed. We could have done that. We have three plots. We could have built three houses legally and not done anything with the land. I get that we don't want that either. So there's a fine line. They'll have to come up with a box that fits what we're doing, some assessment process. I don't see why they can't do that. It's possible, and we're willing to work with them to make it happen. We've done no advertising, but all these calls coming in are from people who want to emulate or copy what we're doing. There's a need out there. We can grow for our communities locally. We won't have to rely on far away places. If we have transportation or tariff issues, we don't have to rely on that. We can do more.

Shawn O'Hara: It's not just a case of getting an exemption because that would not solve the issue for people in the rest of the province.

John Espley: I've had that conversation. I'm working with the Ministry of Agriculture, although it's the Ministry of Finance that controls the tax side of it. If we could have something province-wide, it's easy. I'd like to call it a made in BC program. Let's have a made in BC, or a made in Blenkinsop program, that covers everyone in the province. It gives municipalities guidelines, sets the tax rate, and determines how to assess the property. Let's get that created. I don't see why it needs to take ten years. The need is now.

John Juricic: This is very encouraging from a framework that was somewhat discouraging. You're a visionary, John, and we really appreciate what you're doing. I know you and your partners have put a fair amount of money there. There are things that have to be done, and we now need government to start accommodating visionary businesses, especially in core businesses like food production. We're at the half-hour mark and should likely say goodbye to everybody. John, do you have some final words?

John Espley: One thing that's even bigger scale than what we're talking about—for people who don't know Cascadia Seaweed here on the island, their approval to get their products for use in agriculture in California, which is one of the strictest agricultural places, took 90 days. To my knowledge, it's been a year, and they still don't have approval in Canada. You can clarify that with them.

Shawn O'Hara: At the Sidney Breakfast Club, we heard the same thing. Six months ago, they said it had been a year and a half. If it's still not in place, it's two years. But it was 90 days in California.

John Espley: In California, which is the strictest agriculture—you can't even take in an orange.

John Juricic: As a great closing remark, Philip on our chat says, "We need to convey the urgency before the shelves go empty."

Shawn O'Hara: One thought on that, too, is this takes time. It's not like when the lockdown happened and businesses had to pivot in a few days. Food takes time to grow. If the boats stop, we will be turning to—I won't say cannibalism, but it can take weeks to start getting something going.

John Juricic: John Espley, thank you very much. Shawn O'Hara, by the way, Shawn, I didn't allow you to introduce yourself. My apologies. I'll get better at this. Shawn is a brilliant digital marketer whose company provides digital marketing services to clients all across the region. John, thank you. We're going to talk about this again in the fall. I hope that you will join us.

John Espley: I love it, and thank you for what you're doing, helping all these businesses out. Sidney Breakfast Club is doing an incredible job, and I learn so much at every meeting. I really do enjoy it.

John Juricic: Folks are going to learn from this. I'm now going to end the stream and let's hope that happens. I'm not going to end the Zoom call, so take care everyone. Philip, thank you for your contribution. See you next time.

Links

• Blenkinsop Community Agricultural Centre
• Sidney Breakfast Club (SBC)
• Sidney Radio: SBC Panel on Food Security
• Agricultural Land Commission