North Cowichan has agreed to grant $15,000 to help establish an agricultural-equipment lending library to help with local food production, but not without a debate.
Council finally voted to grant the request from the Cowichan Green Community for the library at a recent meeting, with the funding coming from the municipality’s Climate Action and Energy Plan Reserve Fund.
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According to a staff report, an equipment library is a formalized system of sharing agricultural tools and equipment that can increase efficiency for local producers.
Generally, the tools that are offered through an equipment library are cost prohibitive for individual farms to purchase, or aren’t used frequently enough for an individual farm to justify their purchase.
“The benefits of these types of programs have generally been found to favour the incubation of newer farms rather than larger well established farms,” the report stated.
“The CGC has been working for more than 13 years on supporting food security, and local agriculture and is probably one of the better suited organizations to help North Cowichan with the CAEP strategies relating to agriculture.”
But Coun. Tom Walker said the library would likely also be used by other residents of the Cowichan Valley in addition to residents of North Cowichan, so he suggested the grant request should have gone to the Cowichan Valley Regional District where North Cowichan would only be responsible for approximately 33 per cent of the funding.
Coun. Al Siebring said he grew up on a farm and his father had to borrow equipment on his own to get by for the first few years.
“I have trouble with the notion of having taxpayers expected to shell out of their pockets for this library,” he said.
“I understand that some farmers can’t afford the equipment they need, but my father couldn’t either.”
Coun. Kate Marsh said she’s surprised that some members of council are opposed to granting money for the library.
“The public has said they support our climate action plan and this grant request meets the terms of reference required,” she said.
“Why did we vote for the criteria for these grants and then not support this request when we have available funds?”
Coun. Joyce Behnsen said she liked the idea of the library, but the funding should come from one of the municipality’s other reserve funds geared toward agriculture.
The grant request passed in a tight 4-3 vote.
A second request of $20,000 from the Climate Action and Energy Plan Reserve Fund for Cowichan Energy Alternatives for a bio-diesel project was referred back to staff for more information.
robert.barron@cowichanvalleycitizen.com
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