How big can a farm get before it needs quota?

Why there are limits at all

Chicken, turkey, table eggs, broiler hatching eggs and milk are supply-managed in BC: a marketing board decides how much each farm may produce, as quota, so supply matches demand. Small farms get a carve-out — a permit for a set number of birds or hens — rather than quota. Vegetables, hogs and cranberries have boards too, but no quota. Beef cattle, sheep, goats and most fruit have no marketing board at all.

Chicken

• Up to 200 birds a year for your own household needs nothing from the board — but none of them can be sold.
• Selling 200 to 2,000 birds a year needs a small-lot permit: $20, renewed every year (it expires December 31), one per person or property, with no levy and no need to own the land.
• Register your Premises ID first, then send the board your placement and processing records every year.
• Permit chicken may be sold within BC only. Shops and restaurants may buy it from you — they may buy chicken only from a permit or quota holder.
• Over 2,000 birds a year needs quota, bought from an existing farmer.

Turkey

• Fewer than 50 turkeys a year for your own household needs no licence.
• Up to 300 poults a year needs a Direct Vendor licence ($100). One licence per family, per production unit and per property, and not on land owned or leased by a quota grower.
• Direct Vendor turkeys may be sold only at your farm gate, at farmers’ markets, and to independent butcher shops and independent restaurants — not to grocery or restaurant chains, wholesalers, brokers, processors or other growers.
• They must go to a government-inspected processor: the board’s orders let a processor receive turkeys only if it is a government-inspected facility.
• Over 300 needs quota; the board’s new-entrant program gives access to up to 17,500 kg.

The board’s current production year runs 14 months, from April 26, 2026 to June 26, 2027, and the board may adjust allowances and fees in proportion.

Eggs

• Up to 99 laying hens needs no permit. The board encourages you to register with it; the Premises ID is required.
• 100 to 399 hens needs a small-lot permit: $250 a year, which covers a farm visit and Salmonella testing. You must be 19 or older, hold no quota, and produce organic, heritage-breed, free-range or free-run eggs under a recognised program.
• Small-lot eggs go only to the people who will eat them: ungraded at your farm gate or farmers’ markets, or graded by a registered station and sold to end consumers. A small-lot producer can’t sell to a grading station.
• 400 hens or more needs quota from the board.

Broiler hatching eggs — eggs hatched for meat chicks — have no small-flock exemption: producing any for sale needs a licence from the BC Broiler Hatching Egg Commission. If you hatch heritage or dual-purpose birds, ask the Commission whether its rules reach you.

Milk and dairy

Selling any cow’s milk needs quota from the BC Milk Marketing Board; there is no small-herd exemption. The one small-farm route is the board’s Cottage Industry Program: a small quota to process milk from your own cows, in your own licensed dairy plant on the farm, into products the board approves. On Vancouver Island that means cheese, yogurt and other made products — bottled milk is allowed only in remote regions, and the Island isn’t one.

Goat and sheep milk isn’t under quota, but it is still regulated: milk may be sold only from a certified dairy farm, and it must be pasteurised in a licensed dairy plant. Cheese that meets the federal rules is the exception to pasteurisation.

Vegetables

The BC Vegetable Marketing Commission regulates only some crops: storage crops (potatoes, carrots and beets with tops off, green and red cabbage, parsnips, rutabagas, white turnips and yellow onions), greenhouse cucumbers, lettuce, peppers and tomatoes, and crops grown for processing. Field tomatoes, salad greens and most market-garden crops aren’t on the list.

• On Vancouver Island, growing under about a ton (2,000 lb) of storage crops a year makes you a small-scale producer: no licence fees, no levies, and no need to sell through an agency. For greenhouse crops, the line is 2,000 m² of production allocation.
• Above that, you need a licence and sell through a designated agency — except direct to consumers from your farm, a farmers’ market or a roadside stand, graded Canada No. 1 or No. 2, up to 300 lb of storage crops or 60 lb of greenhouse crops per customer a day.

Hogs, cattle, sheep and goats

None of these has quota. What applies instead is a slaughter licence, ear tags and, for hogs and cattle, a levy that pays for industry programs:

• Hogs: a $1 levy on every market hog, added to your bill by whoever processes it. A licence ($100 a year) is needed only from 300 hogs a year.
• Cattle: a levy on each sale or slaughter, refundable if you apply for it, and not charged on one or two head slaughtered for your own household.
• Sheep and goats: no board and no levy.

Berries

• Cranberries: a grower’s licence from the BC Cranberry Marketing Commission once you have 2 acres or more of bog.
• Blueberries: a levy of 0.8¢ a pound, paid to the “first receiver” when the berries are delivered. Berries you sell straight to customers have no first receiver, so on our reading no levy arises.
• Raspberries: a levy on raspberries you sell, which growers send in themselves.