Farms A Growing Niche For Newcomers

An abundant supply of farmland could offer huge potential to immigrants as our ethnic diversity creates a ready marketplace

At a time when European immigrants were still settling into rural Canada to grow wheat and potatoes, Sam Kang Shin-Bong bought a 35-acre farm near Newmarket with the aim of growing oriental vegetables.

First, it was supplying Chinese cabbage, bok choy and other agricultural products to Korean and Japanese stores. In 1984, he added a processing business and today, Kang's Kimchi Canada Farm annually produces 40 tonnes of kimchi — Korean pickled vegetables — in 18 varieties for distribution across the GTA.

"There's such huge demand from the growing immigration that I can't really get to all the orders," says the 67-year-old. With an immigrant selection system that caters to the labour needs of a "knowledge-based" economy, observers say, the livelihood potential of the agricultural industry has been overlooked by both the government and recent immigrants.

But that may change with the Supporting New Farmers in the Greenbelt project initiated by the University of Guelph's Centre for Land and Water Stewardship, which was awarded a $62,000 grant from the Friends of the Greenbelt Foundation in Toronto yesterday.

"Some new Canadians come from rural areas where they farm as a community, as a family, and do have the farming experience. They don't need the training in agriculture but the infrastructural support for a business plan," explains Peter Mitchell, a research associate with the centre in Guelph.

"And there's a growing niche market for these special food items that we haven't explored in the past. It just wasn't on our radar screen."

According to Statistics Canada, the country's total farm population dropped by more than half over a 30-year period, from 1.6 million in 1971 to 727,000 in 2001, with the immigrant share steadily declining from 8.5 per cent to 6.8 per cent.

In 2001, more than three-quarters of immigrant farm operators were born in Europe, fewer than 10 per cent in Asia.

That doesn't surprise Kang.

"It's hard to make a living out of farming. Our immigration (system) is only interested in getting the doctors, engineers and lawyers to Canada. Not a lot of farmers can qualify to come here," he explains. "And with more and more new immigrants who prefer rice than potatoes, we need to develop ethnic farming. It's just too expensive to import (ethnic food) from other places, given the demands."

Growing up in poverty on a small grape farm near Seoul, Kang was frequently counselled by his father to get a good education and never be a poor farmer. He went to university and became an air-traffic controller.

Kang came to Canada in 1968 and worked as a train-traffic controller for CN Rail, but in 1974, he bought a farm with his brother — who had graduated from a South Korean agricultural high school — and started growing vegetables part-time.

Kang and his wife, Grace, a nurse, quit their jobs in 1984 and devoted themselves to the farm and the kimchi processing plant full-time.

"We found our way in farming on our own, and I think a lot of new immigrants can benefit from some government incentives in agriculture," notes Kang, who has been honoured with the Toronto Food Policy Council's Local Food Hero Award.

Iffat Zehra, founder of a program called Community Economic Development for Immigrant Women, says most recent newcomers to the country are disconnected from rural Ontario. Almost all settle in metropolitan centres in Canada.

Yet our abundant supply of farmland could offer huge potential to immigrants who come from overpopulated countries where land is at a premium.

But, "Canada doesn't have any policy of rural settlement. You go to any immigrant workshops, they teach you how to write a resume and find a job in the city. There's nothing about the opportunity available in the rural areas," says Zehra, who used a Trillium Foundation grant to establish a South Asian food store in Ajax that trains immigrant women in entrepreneurial skills.

"In Canada, the land is available, the market for these foods is available and the human resources are here. All we need is to connect them together."

Guelph University's Mitchell says the centre will meet with immigrant groups and young agriculture graduates to assess their needs and design a plan to train and support new farmers.

"The greenbelt is going to unleash a lot of opportunities for niche food markets and entrepreneurial activities in Ontario. We don't have to limit ourselves to apples, beets, carrots and potatoes," he notes.

Other Greenbelt Foundation grant recipients include projects supporting farmers' markets, brokering food buyers for greenbelt farmers, and developing renewable power.

The province's new 730,000-hectare official greenbelt wraps around the Golden Horseshoe as a permanently protected green space, which includes farmland, forests and wetlands.

Established in 2005, the Greenbelt Foundation funds organizations that support greenbelt farming, the environment and rural communities.

Source:
NICHOLAS KEUNG