Farmers applaud new N.S. pilot program aimed at improving access to agricultural land
CBC
Nova Scotia farmers are applauding a new program aimed at making it easier for producers to establish themselves or scale up through various financing and leasing options for agricultural land.
The three-year pilot is being delivered by the Nova Scotia Farm Loan Board — a Crown lending agency under the Department of Agriculture.
One idea behind the program is to help keep agricultural land within the industry when it goes up for sale, said Alicia King, president of the Nova Scotia Federation of Agriculture.
"Once farmland is lost, we don't usually get it back," said King, who is also a farmer raising beef, sheep and chicken in Antigonish.
In one of the program's funding streams aimed at people new to farming, for example, the board purchases a property and leases it to the farmer for up to 10 years at a more affordable rate.
The farmer's lease payments would not build equity in the land, but they'd have the option at the end of the lease to purchase the property at its original price.
The Program for Accessing Agricultural Land has four funding streams in total, each intended for different types of applicants, according to a Department of Agriculture spokesperson.
King said Nova Scotia lost 28 per cent of its farmland from 2001 to 2022, adding that some of that was due to a loss of farms but also increasing pressures to develop land.
She said the group has been advocating for this type of initiative for a long time.
"The protection of agricultural land is what's going to keep this industry moving forward," she said.
First-generation farmer Meghan Johnny, who grows vegetables with her partner in Antigonish County, said she's "really impressed" with the program.
When Johnny and her partner started their business, they intended to lease farmland and then move toward ownership. But they ran into roadblocks.
"We found ... the price of land, and in particular land that includes housing, kind of was outpacing our farm business," said Johnny. "In addition, we had some difficulties accessing loans."
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