Farmland Needs Farmers. Farmers Need Homes.

Farmland Needs Farmers. Farmers Need Homes.
A reflection on food security, regenerative agriculture and how access to land and housing might work together on Denman Island.

By Monica Mueller
September 6, 2026

An August Grapevine editorial by Keith Porteous prompted me to write “What Does It Really Mean to Preserve Land and Its Agricultural Purpose on Denman Island?” Drawing on my experience as owner and steward of the former Hermitage property, I asked whether protecting agricultural land through regulation is enough. Land still needs people willing and able to care for it, farm it and carry the financial responsibility that comes with doing so.

Then came the September 3rd Grapevine article “Food Insecurity and the Loss of Denman’s Farmland,” by Cylon2036. https://theislandsgrapevine.com/?p=19649 It raised another part of the same puzzle: agricultural land falling out of production, rising land prices, our dependence on food produced elsewhere, and the difficulty facing a new generation of farmers who cannot afford to buy land.

Those concerns resonated with me because I had already encountered another side of the problem myself.

When I purchased the former Hermitage in 2022 and made Denman Island my home, restoring meaningful agricultural activity on the property was my first priority. I came to that goal with enthusiasm, but also with a great deal to learn. I had no farming background, but I did have a strong interest in regenerative agriculture and land management as well as a desire to see this land producing healthy food in ways that restore, rather than deplete, the ecosystem that supports it.

I began working with Young Agrarians and, for a period, employed a Farm/Land Manager because I knew that restoring agriculture here would require people with knowledge and experience that I did not yet have.

But I encountered another very practical problem.

Where would the farmers live?

Making farmland available doesn’t necessarily make farming possible. Farmers also need secure, attainable places to live, and on an island where housing is already scarce, that can become just as significant a barrier to farming as access to land itself.

B.C.’s Agricultural Land Reserve rules do recognize this problem to some extent. They allow a principal residence and, subject to certain conditions and local bylaws, one smaller additional residence. Additional housing may also be approved by the Agricultural Land Commission where it is demonstrated to be necessary for farm use.

But that still leaves me wondering about a different scale of agriculture. What if the goal isn’t simply to accommodate one additional person, but to create a viable regenerative farm capable of producing meaningful amounts of food for the community while generating enough income to sustain the people and infrastructure behind it?

That may require more than one farmer — and potentially more than one secure place for people involved in the farm to live.

So perhaps the question isn’t whether housing should be allowed on agricultural land. Some already is. The more interesting question is whether housing can be designed specifically to support agricultural production rather than displace it, while using as little productive farmland as possible.

This seems particularly timely as Denman considers proposed changes intended to address affordable and attainable housing, including housing and the ALR.

Perhaps we are looking at two problems that need to be considered together: how do we protect agricultural land from residential development while also making it possible for the people needed to farm that land to live here?

Perhaps we don’t have to invent everything from scratch.

Here on Denman, CoHo Landing demonstrates a cooperative approach to land and housing in which homes are clustered and affordability is protected outside the conventional real-estate model. In Powell River, Blueberry Commons combines cooperative housing and collectively held land with a working organic farm. Young Agrarians is already connecting farmers who need land with landowners who have it.

None is necessarily the model for Denman Island. But perhaps they provide some of the pieces.

I find myself wondering what a regenerative farming cooperative might look like here. Could people with different skills and levels of experience work and learn together, share infrastructure, benefit from what the farm produces, and sell additional production to help sustain the operation?

Could there even be a small farm school, where experienced farmers teach people like me who genuinely want to learn? Could agricultural training and farm-incubator models help a new generation gain practical experience and eventually establish farms of their own?

Interestingly, that would also honour an earlier chapter in this property’s history. When Jim and Marie Bohlen lived here, the property was known as the Greenpeace Experimental Farm. It offered a summer living-working-study program where participants learned about organic gardening, applied ecology, practical skills and living more closely with the land.

The Bohlens were exploring these questions nearly fifty years ago — how agriculture, ecological stewardship, learning and a simpler way of living might coexist on the same land. In so many ways, they were ahead of their time. Perhaps the most enduring thing they planted here was an idea: that land can sustain people without being exploited by them. That feels like a seed worth cultivating again.

I don’t have the solution, nor do I pretend to have the expertise needed to create it alone. I also cannot design, finance, manage and assume all the risk of something like this by myself.

What I do have is land suitable for agriculture, years of experience managing complex organizational projects and bringing people together around difficult challenges, a willingness to keep learning, and a genuine desire to support this community and see more food grown here.

As I await the arrival of my first grandchild, I find myself thinking more about what we leave for the generation that follows us. 

One of the most meaningful legacies I can imagine for the former Greenpeace Farm and Hermitage would be a structure that helps ensure fresh, healthy food continues to be grown here long after I am gone—regenerating the soil and ecosystem that sustain us, supporting the farmers whose hard work keeps us nourished, and ensuring that the knowledge of how to grow food and care for the land is passed from one generation to the next.

There are people on Denman who know far more about growing food and farming than I do – probably most everyone that lives here! Others understand cooperatives, housing, financing, land-use planning and community food systems. There may also be people who would love to farm but cannot afford to buy land here.

Perhaps we already have many of the pieces. The challenge is finding ways to put them together.

I don’t have the answer. But I would very much like to be part of co-creating one. And if this land could play some small part in strengthening Denman Island’s food security for generations to come, I would consider that an honour and a legacy worthy of manifesting and investing my energy and resources in. 

Farmland needs Farmers. Farmers need homes. Perhaps one of Denman’s opportunities is to stop thinking about these as separate challenges and start asking how we might solve them together.

This article has been edited for print length. The complete version, together with my earlier article, “What Does It Really Mean to Preserve Land and Its Agricultural Purpose on Denman Island?”, can be found at Nature Nurture Refuge on Substack, where I will continue exploring the questions emerging from my experience stewarding this land on Denman — from regenerative agriculture, food security and farm-supportive housing to ecological stewardship, contemplative practice and our relationship with nature.

naturenurturerefuge.substack.com

Further Reading: