Through membership and collaboration with the Economic Development Commission and with the Agricultural Support Officer Keith Duhaime, the CFDCCO has began to research and develop ways to assist with value added, artisan style agriculture development that includes developing an experiential based learning facility, joint venturing with other agriculture regions in BC to help brand and market locally produced products.

Opportunities for Okanagan Agriculture

At the same time that agriculture within the Okanagan faces great challenges, it is also being presented with great opportunities. The same demographic that bears the challenge of succession is also the one with highly disposable incomes and tastes to match, including fine foods and beverages. Shifts in the global demands and supplies for fine food and beverage products is also creating opportunities for local entrepreneurs as newly developed economies place demands on traditional suppliers. Allocations of single malt scotches are being diverted to more profitable emerging markets such as China and India. Likewise is happening with the finest olive oils of Italy, cheeses of France, and other luxury foods. Trends in popular culture such as the 100 mile diet and the slow food movement are also contributing to these opportunities.

The Planks and Pillars of an Agricultural Renaissance

Key to both current and future agriculturalists in the Okanagan meeting present challenges and taking advantage of emerging opportunities will be a renaissance within the industry. This renaissance will depend on the support of six planks:

• Diversification & Innovation: A move away from traditional commodity products within the Central Okanagan and into highly differentiated, highly value-added artisan agricultural and food products.
• Assurance of Origin, Quality and Authenticity: Consistent with popular trends such as the 100 mile diet, consumers are demanding assurance that the products they are purchasing are authentic, locally produced, and of the highest quality. Their perceptions of quality are not only limited to traditional attributes such as taste and freshness, but also confidence in food safety, minimized environmental impact, humane treatment of livestock, and that they are paying a fair price to the producers of these products.
• Conducive regulation: A regulatory environment that is transparent and does not inhibit agriculturalists from taking advantage of current and emerging opportunities.
• Incubation and facilitation: An environment that nurtures and supports innovation, creativity, and its commercialization.
• Infrastructure: An environment which provides the necessary infrastructure including transportation, communications, natural resources, and financial resources and expertise for establishment and sustainability.

Most importantly however, agriculture needs a renewal of human resources with new ideas and the right mix of technical, business, and entrepreneurship knowledge, skills, and experience to implement them.

Domestically and locally, Okanagan agriculturalists in collaboration with local, provincial and federal governments can meet the challenges of establishing these planks. It will be dependent however on establishing four key pillars to support these planks:

A Foreign Direct Investment and skills recruitment program: A concerted effort to attract entrepreneurs from abroad with the financial capital and skills already in hand that can land on the ground and kick start the industry. This will be a targeted effort to recruit foreign entrepreneurs, particularly those with the agricultural and food crafts that can revitalize the local agricultural industry. These may include, but are not limited to master cheesemakers, charcutiers, and truffliers. The role of this pillar will be to enable and support the diversification and innovation plank, the quality and authenticity plank, and the human resources plank.

Assurance of Origin and Quality program. To provide the assurances that consumers are looking for, we need to look at the development of a program modeled after France’s AOC (Appellation d'Origine Controlee), Italy’s DOC (Denominazione di Origine Controlla) or Quebec’s Charlevoix region’s IGP (indication géographique protégée) programs. This is also essential to the development of a regional brand for Okanagan agricultural and food products to assure the sustainability of the industry.

An Incubation Facility. As with the development of a successful high technology industry, a revitalized agricultural sector in the Okanagan will only be accomplished if a facility is present where new agricultural enterprises can be nurtured with favorable rates and access to land and water resources, to infrastructure for processing and distribution, and perhaps most importantly to mentors and peers for sharing ideas and providing encouragement.

An Education Facility and Programming: The industry also requires and education facility and programming for new entrants. Technical training and education will be necessary to local and/or domestic residents to provide the requisite skills and knowledge to work for newly arrived entrepreneurs, and/or as the basis for their own agricultural and food related enterprises.