How Québec Works to Support Its Next Generation of Farmers 

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• Melissa Pasanen ©️ Seven Days
• Jacob Boomhower at Boomhower Farms

As far back as he can remember, Jacob Boomhower has loved farming. The story of the 19-year-old's first word is entrenched in family lore. During a recent visit to Boomhower Farms — about 70 minutes from Burlington in Québec's Eastern Townships — Jacob and his father, Keith, each recounted it separately.

"My first word was not 'mom' or 'dad.' It was 'tractor,'" Jacob said, grinning broadly. "My dad thought it was funny. My mom was very offended."

The young dairy farmer is the fifth generation of Boomhowers on the roughly 100-acre farm, where father and son work together. The exact acreage is a little fuzzy. "My dad says we have 140, but when I count everything, it's more like 110," Jacob said. "There's 30 acres that I debate with him."

Four years ago, the Boomhowers invested about 2 million Canadian dollars in a new free-stall barn and installed a robotic milking machine for the 58 milkers in their 100-head herd. They have no employees.

After a recent debate with his dad about their farming practices, Jacob said ruefully, "I did chores alone for two days because he wasn't that happy with me."

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• Melissa Pasanen ©️ Seven Days
• Keith (left) and Jacob Boomhower

Such intergenerational dynamics are standard on family farms on both sides of the border, but at least one aspect of young farmers' lives differs in Québec from in Vermont. The province provides financial grants of up to $50,000 to farmers 18 to 39 who have earned a vocational diploma or higher-education degree in a field related to agriculture, administration or management.

This policy aims to counter a familiar trend: Canada's 2021 agriculture census shows that Québec's farmers are aging — although they remain younger than the national average. Over the past 20 years, the average age of a farm operator in the province has risen from 47 to 54, versus a national average of 56. (For comparison's sake, as of the most recently available 2017 U.S. agriculture census data, Vermont's average farmer age was 56 and the national average, 57.5.)

Jacob just completed his second year of a three-year farm technology management program at the Institut de Technologie Agroalimentaire du Québec in Saint-Hyacinthe, about an hour from home. The curriculum covers animal and plant sciences, business skills, French, English and, unexpectedly, philosophy — which Jacob has enjoyed very much.

"We learned how to debate properly and not give incomplete explanations, like how to have your point of view and be able to objectively view another person's point of view," the young man explained, "[so] that you're not always in your emotions and just babbling your head off."

Not only is college tuition significantly lower in Canada — a full-time semester costs Jacob just $200, or "peanuts," as he put it — but, after he graduates and takes an ownership stake in the family business, he will qualify to complete a relatively simple application for a $50,000 grant to invest in the farm.

The "financial support program for aspiring farmers" is funded by the Ministère de l'Agriculture, des Pêcheries et de l'Alimentation (Québec's Ministry of Agriculture, Fisheries and Food) and administered through the Financière Agricole du Québec (the Agricultural Finance Agency of Québec). It aims to help young people joining or buying an existing farm or establishing a new business and to encourage them to build useful skills and knowledge. Full-time farmers can apply for $20,000 to $50,000, depending on the type and amount of schooling they have completed.

According to Véronique Simard Brochu of the Fédération de la Relève Agricole du Québec (the Québec Federation of Young Farmers), the provincial grant program was created in 1997 and is unique to Québec. FRAQ is an arm of the Union des Producteurs Agricoles, the farmers' union to which all Québécois farmers must belong. Farmers under 40 can choose to have an additional membership in FRAQ; about 2,000 of the province's 6,685 young farmers do.

FRAQ dates back 40 years and is the most robust such organization in Canada, according to its president, Julie Bissonnette. It lobbies the provincial government on priority issues for young farmers and works to connect them with one another and with resources such as business, financial and mental health support.

Bissonnette, 30, is also a farmer. Raised on the Saint Lawrence River, 30 miles north of Montréal, she did not take over her family's dairy farm. About seven years ago, she joined her partner, Olivier Fleury, on his fledgling dairy venture in L'Avenir, a town between Montréal and Québec City.

Canada's supply management approach to some agricultural sectors meant that the young couple had to purchase not just animals but also quota, or the right to sell a certain quantity of milk. The Canadian system — which also applies to maple, poultry and eggs — limits the supply of these commodities based on expected domestic demand in order to ensure predictable prices for farmers.

Each kilogram unit of dairy quota costs $24,000 and is roughly equivalent to the production of one cow. The upside, Bissonnette explained by phone, is that "Every day, we know that the milk will sell. We know that we have the [guaranteed] price and the market."

Bissonnette earned the maximum $50,000 young farmer grant, which helped a little as the couple established their farm, she said, along with other incentives for young farmers entering the quota system. Eight years in, the couple have bought a barn and land and worked their way up from an initial 27 kilograms to 75 kilograms of quota. But cash flow is still very tight, Bissonnette said.

The impact of Québec's youth-focused grant program is "hard to measure," Simard Brochu of FRAQ conceded. It is "very popular ... and generally appreciated," she continued, though she noted that the grant limit has remained static for the past decade. "Many are asking for it to be updated."

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• Courtesy Of Olivier Bourget
• Stéphanie Wang at Le Rizen

A 10-minute drive southeast of the Boomhowers' dairy in Stanbridge East, Stéphanie Wang, 36, has built a very different kind of farm in Frelighsburg. Since the first-generation farmer started Le Rizen in 2016, she has scraped together funding from various sources, including a $30,000 young farmer grant.

Wang was born in Montréal, one of three daughters of parents who immigrated to Canada from southern China by way of Madagascar. After earning a master's degree in the sociology of agriculture, she worked as an advocate for farmworker rights and food sovereignty. She had no plans to farm, but after several years, Wang said, "I wanted to do something concrete, [not] managing projects and groups. I wanted to have something of my own."

Her 1.5-acre organic operation specializes in Asian vegetables inspired by her heritage, many of which are suited to the cool Québec climate. In the farm's 110-by-35-foot unheated hoop house, young turmeric, ginger and makrut lime plants grow under extra protective layers. Beyond the greenhouse, neat rows of bok choy, spicy mustard greens, Chinese broccoli, tatsoi and scallions line a field.

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• Courtesy Of Olivier Bourget
• Le Rizen

Le Rizen vends vegetables, kimchi, sauces, vinaigrette and bánh mì sandwiches at local farmers markets and occasionally at the Jean-Talon Market in Montréal. The farm hosts gardening and culinary workshops. Wang also sells vegetables to a few restaurants in the Eastern Townships and in the city.

Sitting at a small, round table at one end of a shipping container turned office and production kitchen, Wang chatted the day before hosting a plant sale on the farm.

A nearby stack of books included the 30-year-old classic The New Organic Grower: A Master's Manual of Tools and Techniques for the Home and Market Gardener by Eliot Coleman and an elegant 2022 hardcover in French by Wang and her sisters, Caroline and Patricia. The English-language version is called Asian Vegetables: Gardening. Cooking. Storytelling and will be released this fall.

Wang explained that she named her farm in honor of rice (riz in French) and zen. "We're trying to not only produce vegetables but also to find a balanced lifestyle," she said. "It's challenging because it's very demanding, hard work."

Over the past seven years, Wang has planned and planted, cooked and counted pennies, weeded and worried. Though the business now includes three team members, including her partner, David Bolduc, "I do everything," she said with a laugh.

A few weeks after she met with Seven Days, Wang was named farm producer of the year by Les Lauriers de la Gastronomie Québécoise. Since then, she said, more restaurants have been calling her, but it's too early to know if they will become steady customers.

Wang appreciates that she pays reasonable rent to the nonprofit organization that owns the land on which she and a neighboring three-acre vegetable operation farm. "Their goal is to make land accessible to young farmers," she said.

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• Courtesy Of Olivier Bourget
• Le Rizen vegetables

On top of the provincial young farmer grant, Wang has successfully applied for other grants, including one that partially covered the cost of her hoop house. This year, a federal youth employment program paid about half the $28,000 seasonal salary of one of her employees.

Wang qualified for $20,000 of her young farmer grant by completing her master's degree; an agricultural management college course earned her an additional $10,000. Overall, Wang said, she thinks the program "makes sense, because if you studied the management of agricultural production, you have more chance to succeed."

She worries that the program is unsustainable, however, because it invests in individuals rather than in institutions that could outlast specific farmers.

Over her years of farming, Wang observed, "There has been a whole movement of people starting farms, trying to sell vegetables or other things, but then they realize after some time that it's so hard, you know, with financial difficulties or burnout or physical pain."

When some decide to quit, "We're losing these farms and ... all of the public money that has been put into those farms," Wang continued.

She hopes to develop Le Rizen into a farmer cooperative that can endure without relying on her or any other particular farmer.

"It's not important who farms here," she said. "What is important is that the farm is there to provide food for the community."

Meanwhile, the province is working to ensure that there will be young farmers to steward those farms. Jacob Boomhower, for one, looks forward to summer 2024, after graduation, when he will be able to focus fully on the family dairy and putting his $50,000 grant to best use.

For instance, he's been considering building an additional silo. "My sales pitch for that is that, if we have more room for storage, we could have fermented silage longer throughout the year, and the cows would have better productivity," he said thoughtfully. "But there's a few good things I could do with it."