Sunshine Coast gardener, mother and entrepreneur Nicole Huska, 29, wants to grow the concept of small-scale urban farming into a British Columbia-wide franchise but she admits she first has to nudge back-to-the-land thinking into the business mainstream.
Urban farming has caught hold in Vancouver and across the province, but Huska notes that it is primarily small scale with an emphasis less on profit than on healthy food. Huska, who owns the two-acre Nicoles' Farm at Halfmoon Bay, B.C., a 15-minute drive north of Sechelt, has sketched out a much wider business plan.
Huska envisions scores of homeowners turning over a portion of their property for fruit and vegetable production for a share of the harvest. A further incentive to land owners, she said, is that farming may qualify the property for a lower property tax rate.
Huska, with her partner, also owns a construction business, and explains she would provide deer-proof fencing, raised garden beds and the labour to grow and harvest the food. There are already agreements in place with the independently owned Marketplace IGA in Gibson and Clayton Foods in Sechelt to "buy everything I can deliver," Huska said.
"It will sell," said Bob Hoy, owner of the Marketplace IGA. "I believe if she's able to produce a good-quality product locally on the Sunshine Coast, we'll be able to sell it no problem at a fair market price." Hoy said grocers crave local produce all year long.
Huska estimates that her intensive small farming can yield up to $100,000 per acre in produce, based on sales to grocers and through local garden markets. By rotating vegetables with specialty herbs and using greenhouses, she said Nicole's Farms would be an all-season venture.
Ward Teulon, owner of City Farm Boy, among the first and one of several small urban farmers in Vancouver, agrees it is possible to gross $100,000 from an acre of vegetables, but he cautioned that a large operation involving many landowners could be expensive and risky. Ward, who farms six gardens on Kitsilano residential lots and sells directly to customers from his own backyard, added that grocery stores pay far less than a farmer can earn dealing directly with consumers. "I can easily sell $10,000 to $15,000 in vegetables during the season," said Teulon.
Typically, grocers will pay a producer 50 per cent to 70 per cent of the retail value.
Teulon once had 17 lots running across Vancouver, but found that the stress of dealing with owners and neighbours ["gardens are messy and we had complaints"] and paying for labour required more work than he was willing to handle.
"Most small [vegetable] farmers are not business tuned," Huska, who plans to have 300 beds planted this year, said. "But just because you're a small farmer doesn't mean you have to be poor."
– Compiled by Kevan O'Brien
from Western Investor March 2012
