08/13/2026
Something hit me today that I wasn’t really expecting.
We’ve been going through old files at the business, getting ready to purge documents that we simply don’t need anymore. As I worked through old customer and producer records, I started recognizing names — farms and families we dealt with years ago.
And then I realized how many of them simply aren’t here anymore.
Not because they all disappeared at once. They didn’t.
They disappeared one at a time.
One family retired. One farm was sold. One operation became too difficult to continue. Another piece of farmland changed hands and eventually became something other than a farm.
When you see them one at a time, you don’t necessarily notice the change. But looking back through decades of records, you suddenly see just how much has disappeared.
And that really hit me.
At the same time, Vancouver Island has continued to grow. More people, more homes, more roads, more demand for everything — including food.
It makes me wonder what Vancouver Island will look like another 30 years from now.
If our population continues to grow while the number of people actually producing food here continues to shrink, at what point do we have to start worrying about our food security?
I’m not saying this to criticize anyone. Farmers make incredibly difficult decisions, and there are a lot of reasons why farming on Vancouver Island has become harder.
I’m saying it because I think we need to notice what is happening before it becomes something we can’t change.
A farm disappearing one at a time doesn’t feel like a crisis.
But when you look back and realize how many are gone, you start to understand that it might be a much bigger story than we realized.
We should be proud of the people who continue to farm here.
We should support them.
And maybe most importantly, we should recognize how important they are before we realize how much we’ve lost.
Because eventually, the question won’t be how many people live on Vancouver Island.
It will be:
How much of the food those people need can Vancouver Island still produce?
