With its mountainous terrain and harsh climate in the northern part of the province, only about 2 percent of British Columbia is suitable for agriculture. Nevertheless some of the valleys, river deltas, and plateaus of the province have important agricultural industries.

A farm field near Smithers in 1930
B-06276
Most of the best agricultural land is located near the large population centres in the lower Fraser Valley, the Okanagan Valley, and the Thompson Valley.

Severnson family on their farm
at Bella Coola in the 1890s
Detail of D-09434
While many of the settlers in British Columbia were farmers they consumed most of their own produce or sold them only locally. Agriculture began and developed to supply meat, vegetables and dairy products to people who earned their living in the resource industries of mining, forestry and fishing.

Harvest at a farm in the
Alberni Valley, Vancouver Island
in the early 1900s
Detail of E-00214
Even so British Columbia has never been able to grow as much food as the population consumed and has always had to import food from outside the province.

The Ellis farm and ranch
near Penticton in 1869
A-02130
The Hudson's Bay Company introduced agriculture to British Columbia by growing vegetables and raising some cows at its forts to supply food to its employees. The gold rush in the 1850s and 1860s saw the real beginning of vegetable farming to provide produce to the growing population.

The Coldstream Ranch at
Vernon in the 1890s
A-07993
In particular this era saw the beginning of cattle ranching in the interior of the province as cattle were brought in from the United States to supply meat to the thousands of miners in the Cariboo.

The first cattle ranches were established in the interior of the Province in the early 1860's.

Branding calves in the
Nicola Valley in 1895
C-05954
View of grazing lands
on the O'Keefe Ranch near
Vernon in the 1930s
B-05677


Today cattle ranching is important in many parts of the grass lands in the southern and central interior of B.C.

Continued...





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