Kentville, NS -
By using information from Statistics Canada, Agriculture and Agri-Food Canada hopes to fill a "data gap" about Kings County (Nova Scotia) farms by profiling farm types and value-added activities.
Agriculture and Agri-Food Canada land use analyst Patsy Michiels, who made a presentation to Kings County councillors at the Tuesday, June 2 monthly session, said a proposed project would help get more data to help support land-use decisions relating to agriculture.
Michiels said they would partner with the County of Kings on the initiative, working with planning manager Chrystal Fuller. Other partners include Statistics Canada, the Kings Community Economic Development Agency, the Kings County Federation of Agriculture and the provincial Department of Agriculture.
She said the hope is that the agricultural profiles will give a description of the major features of agricultural activity in the area. Working with partners across the country, the indication is there is a lack of relevant information about agriculture in relation to land-use planning. They document and publish their work in each case, including their conclusions.
DATA GAP NOT BEING FILLED…
Michiels said agriculture is becoming more common on land-use planning agendas across the country. Agriculture and Agri-Food Canada's land-use division is always looking for opportunities and they're quite interested and excited about undertaking a project in Atlantic Canada.
"In Kings County, there is lots of information on agriculture but there's a data gap not being filled," she said.
A project proposal has been agreed on to describe the value of agriculture in Kings from the perspective of farm type. Michiels said they want to build on existing documentation published by the Federation of Agriculture that was developed using 2001 census data. She said they know the number of farms in each type category based on the 2001 data, but there is no description of them.
"We want to take it a step further and profile each farm type in the county using 2006 census date," she said. "We hope to evaluate if our method of profiling is beneficial for land-use planning."
Michiels said they hope to have their final report submitted by March 2010.
WILL LOOK AT VALUE-ADDED AS WELL…
As a second component to the project, they hope to be able to document how much value-added activity is related to primary agriculture in Kings. She said they're interested to see if agricultural-added-value profiling is possible and, if so, what information would be useful to the county and to industry.
Councillor Dick Killam said there has been a loss of farms in the county between 2001 and 2006 and asked if anyone was doing front-line interviews with farmers.
Michiels said they aren't aware of any group or organization doing so. They're going to use existing data from Statistics Canada to describe farms in terms of financial information relating to agricultural operations, for example. They'll be making a request to Statistics Canada to provide the database.
Councillor Wayne Atwater said the 2006 census data in relation to farms in Kings would be seriously flawed compared to the realities of 2009. He asked if the federal government has ever made any move in the direction of agricultural land-use protection. Michiels said their division has not worked with regulations. -The Advertiser
