BCBusiness

May 2021 - Women of the Year

With a mission to inform, empower, celebrate and advocate for British Columbia's current and aspiring business leaders, BCBusiness go behind the headlines and bring readers face to face with the key issues and people driving business in B.C.

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10 BCBUSINESS MAY 2021 READ THIS We've all heard it: COVID-19 changed the retail sector simply by accelerating e-commerce and other existing trends. Retail futurist Doug Stephens begs to differ. In Resurrecting Retail: The Future of Business in a Post-Pandemic World, Toronto- based Stephens argues that the crisis has remade his industry. If retailers want to survive in a hypercompetitive new landscape dominated by Amazon and other "apex predators," they must figure out what question their brand answers for customers, he says. To lend a hand, Stephens gives them 10 archetypes to choose from, with names like the Storyteller, the Activist and the Renegade. Figure 1 Publishing 256 pages, hardcover, $36 • and only rely on imported, that's a huge risk." Just this year, climate change, border issues and disease outbreaks threatened stores' ability to keep shelves stocked, O'Hara notes. Farming is also a key sector of the B.C. economy, generating nearly $8.5 billion in spending in 2019, according to the pro- vincial Agriculture Ministry. People like Wilson see oppor- tunity where others see weeds. Two-thirds of new entrants to farming have no family history in agriculture, and they face more challenges than in many startup businesses. "It's no easy job," O'Hara says. "Farmers need to be a climatologist, a meteorologist, a veterinarian, a seed expert, a soil expert, a carpenter, an engineer, a mechanic. There's no clear path to that depth of knowledge." Plus, there's the cost of land. Since 2007, the sale price of a Canadian farm has climbed by about 150 percent, according to agricultural lender Farm Credit Canada. In 2019, an average acre of Van- couver Island farmland surged 13 percent in value, to $57,500, as hobby farmers and specula- tive investors drove up prices. The only such land in Canada that's pricier is in the Fraser Valley and the Okanagan. "The No. 1 barrier to new farmers is access to land," says Sara Dent, executive direc- tor and co-founder of Young Agrarians, a program that helps new farmers get estab- lished. "But there are techni- cal issues, too, like how do you run a farm business suc- cessfully if farming is not in your blood?" Dent co-founded Young Agrarians in 2012 as a non- profit. They tackled the second problem first, offering business training and mentorship to rookie farmers, young and old. In 2016, after seeing the suc- cess of a land-sharing program in Quebec, Dent launched a B.C. pilot where Young Agrar- ians played matchmaker, intro- ducing farmers seeking land to landowners with vacant or underused fields. The provin- cial government funded Young Agrarians' B.C. Land Match- ing Program in 2018. Now provincewide, BCLMP made its 100th match late last year. One of them was Wilson, who knew she didn't have the capital to buy land. On the other side were Ankia and Stefan Kriegler, the owners of a 10-acre farm just north of Cour- tenay on Vancouver Island. "We're city people," Ankia says. "We could never farm on our own. Our intention was to find someone and give them a chance to farm. It's a way for us to give back to the community." A Young Agrarians land matcher came to the first few meetings between Wilson and the Krieglers with lists of what to discuss and sample legal documents. In 2019, both par- ties signed a three-year lease for 1.5 acres that Wilson now calls Pendleton Farm. "Young Agrarians recog- nized the succession problem and developed an innovative solution to it," says James Vercammen, professor of food resource economics with UBC's faculty of land and food systems. But land matching isn't a panacea, he notes. Lack of pro- cessing capacity, competition with lower-cost jurisdictions and the grocers' preference for semi-truck-sized supply chains are all obstacles. Only owner- ship gives farmers the certainty to make big infrastructure in- vestments, Vercammen says. If banks don't like the risk of uncertain farm outputs, other investors see potential. From a handful of funds worldwide fo- cused on agriculture in 2008, there are now some 300, data provider Preqin estimates. And Young Agrarians is finding ways to help aging farmers pass down their life's work outside of the family. It's part of the group's mission to revitalize rural economies and fertilize farming in B.C. "If we want future farms, we need to recruit new farmers," Dent says. "To do that, we need to nurture farm startups." • G O F I G U R E ( the informer ) Top of the Pops With the B.C. govern- ment's pandemic- delayed cancellation of the PST exemption on sweet carbonated drinks now in effect, we crack the tab on a sector that likes its sparkle by Melissa Edwards 1858 B.C.'s first soda bottling works, Alexander Phillips, founded in Victoria 101 Minimum number of soda pop companies operating in the province between then and the early 1900s 74 B.C. soft drink and ice producers in 2019 21.5% of the national total 31.1% are one-person shows $1,627,700,000 Total B.C. household spending on non-alcoholic beverages that year g 17.3% compared to 2015 $531,700 Average 2018 revenue for a small- or medium-sized pop/ice producer in Canada 40 million+ Servings of root beer sold nationwide each year by North Vancouver–based A&W Root Beer Beverages, via A&W restaurants >50% of the Canadian root beer market A&W also sells 2.5 million cases annually in stores

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