B.C.'s farmers lost $457M in 2024, the most in Canada

British Columbia farmers lost $456.9 million in 2024, according to Statistics Canada, with a lobby group saying there are multiple reasons the province's agricultural sector suffered the largest net loss in Canada last year.

Statistics Canada data shows that B.C. farms, as a whole, haven't turned a profit since 2017, and the farm sector has seen a larger net loss every year since 2020.

The B.C. Agriculture Council said the cost to find suitable agricultural land is prohibitively high in B.C., and the average farmer in the Lower Mainland is carrying millions of dollars in debt.

In addition, a series of climate disasters have wreaked havoc on B.C. farms, including the 2021 floods in the Fraser Valley that affected 1,100 farms and led to more than 60,000 hectares of farmland being lost, according to Jennifer Woike, the president of the agriculture council.

The council is asking the government to increase its compensation programs for those affected by climate disasters, as well as updating the province's 52-year-old Agriculture Land Reserve (ALR) to ensure farms can survive in the decades to come.

"B.C. is the most expensive province to farm in in Canada," said Woike, who owns a Vancouver Island farm that primarily deals with egg-laying poultry.

Woike said one of the biggest hurdles for the sustainability of farms, especially for farmers who don't have intergenerational wealth and land to rely on, is the cost of land.

"You can't just build a poultry farm on a five-acre parcel of land. It doesn't fit," she said. "So finding those large acreages are few and far between, and they are expensive."

Woike said  climate change was a "whole chapter" unto itself when it came to how farmers in the province have struggled with profitability.

In 2021, an unprecedented heat dome led to fruit crops being "cooked" on the branch in the Okanagan and Fraser valleys, followed by thousands of crops being submerged by floods in the fall.

Two years after that, the province saw its worst drought and wildfire seasons in recorded history. In 2024, a historic cold snap led to the destruction of a year's worth of crops in some areas.

Woike said she appreciates the province's climate mitigation and disaster relief programs, but the application processes were often bogged down in bureaucracy.

"Those programs were not designed to make the farmer whole. You know, sometimes they only cover up to 70 per cent of the losses," she said.

A new hurdle facing farmers this year is the prospect of U.S. tariffs — with Woike saying B.C. farmers are reliant on imports, as the province simply doesn't produce the right kind of fertilizers and pest control products that farmers need.