Farms, fishers & beekeepers
Selling your farm’s fruit, vegetables and greens on Vancouver Island
A farm selling only whole, uncut fruit and vegetables is outside BC’s food premises rules, so it can sell at the farm gate, at markets and online without a food permit. Cutting, washing and bagging, juicing or preserving makes it a prepared food. Farm stores on ALR land follow the Agricultural Land Commission’s retail rules.
Changes are coming
- Minimum piece rates for hand harvesting go up — takes effect 31 December 2026. What changes
- A new guideline for selling at farmers’ markets — proposed, no date set; it may not happen. What changes
10 changes with a date and 8 proposals for farms in all. See what’s coming
Only want the steps that apply to you?
What you need, in order
10 steps. Each links to its own page, with the forms and the rule behind it.
- 1
Farm store rules on Agricultural Land Reserve land
Agricultural Land Commission
For a farm store on ALR land
A farm stand or store in the ALR needs no ALC approval, and the ALC sets no size limit, if everything it sells is grown on your farm — though your local government can cap its building area or site coverage. Selling bought-in goods too caps the whole retail area at 300 m², at least half of it for your own farm’s products. Processing on the farm is allowed when at least half of what you process is your own. A café or restaurant is not a farm use and needs an ALC application — except the lounge of a licensed farm winery, cidery, brewery, distillery or meadery (up to 125 m² indoors and 125 m² outdoors).
- Cost:
- A non-farm-use application to the ALC is $1,500 ($750 to your local government, $750 to the ALC).
- 2
BC Vegetable Marketing Commission licence
BC Vegetable Marketing Commission
For regulated storage and greenhouse crops
Only certain vegetables are regulated: storage crops (potatoes, carrots and beets with tops off, green and red cabbage, parsnips, rutabaga, white turnips, yellow onions), greenhouse cucumbers, lettuce, peppers and tomatoes, and crops grown for processing (beans, broccoli, Brussels sprouts, cauliflower, corn, peas, strawberries). Growing 1 tonne or more of them a year makes you a producer who needs a licence and sells through a designated agency — except direct to consumers from the farm, a farmers’ market or an authorised roadside stand, graded, up to 300 lb of storage crops or 60 lb of greenhouse crops per customer per day. Producer-shippers, small-scale producers and certified-organic growers have exceptions, and the Commission can approve some specialty and direct-to-retailer sales. Most market-garden crops are not on the list.
- Cost:
- Storage or greenhouse producer licence: $500 application plus $250 a year — not charged to small-scale producers.
- 3
Organic certification
A certification body under the BC Certified Organic Program or the Canada Organic Regime
Only if you call anything “organic”
Since September 2018, “organic” is a protected word in BC. Using it — on a label, a market banner, a website, a CSA box — needs certification: the BC program for sales within BC, the federal Canada Organic Regime for anything crossing a border. Phrases like “grown following organic principles” or “uncertified organic” need it too. A farm converting may say “transitional organic” if it sells only in BC.
- Cost:
- A yearly administration fee set by regulation (from $71.60 for under $10,000 in sales), plus your certification body’s own fees.
- Time:
- A certificate lasts one year.
- 4
The Buy BC logo
Government of British Columbia
OptionalOptional: the Buy BC logo
A free licence to put the Buy BC logo on your packaging: producers qualify with food 100% grown, caught or raised in BC, processors with at least 51% of processing costs in BC. Label designs are approved before printing, and the licence is the entry point to the province’s cost-shared marketing funding.
- Cost:
- Free.
- 5
Egg flock permit
BC Egg Marketing Board
If you keep laying hens
Up to 99 hens needs no permit; 100–399 hens needs a small-lot permit — you must be 19 or older, with free-range, free-run, organic or heritage production — and those eggs, graded or not, go only to the people who eat them; 400 or more needs quota. Ungraded eggs are sold from your farm or home, or at farmers’ markets. These rules cover chicken eggs only.
- Cost:
- Small-lot permit $250 a year.
- 6
Premises ID registration
BC Ministry of Agriculture and Food
If you keep hens or any other farm animals
Anyone responsible for even one farm animal must register the place it is kept with BC’s Premises ID program: cattle, bison, sheep, goats, pigs, horses, alpacas and llamas, rabbits, farmed deer, chickens, turkeys, ducks, geese and other poultry, and honey bees. There is no minimum flock, herd or hive count. It is how the Province finds the farms at risk in a disease outbreak or a flood, and you need it before you can apply for a Farmgate licence or a chicken small-lot permit.
- Cost:
- Free.
- Time:
- Register within 30 days of becoming responsible for the animals, and report changes within 30 days.
- 7
A legal-for-trade scale, if you price by weight
Measurement Canada
If you sell by weight
Only matters if you charge by weight — by the pound or kilo at the counter or market table. Then the scale must be a “legal for trade” model, the kind sold for retail use with a Measurement Canada approval number, rather than a kitchen scale, and a private service company checks it every five years. It sits level, faces the customer and is zeroed, and packaging isn’t charged. Food sold by the piece, or in packs that all weigh the same, doesn’t need one; neither does portioning a burger patty.
- 8
MarketSafe
BC FOODSAFE Secretariat
OptionalRecommended for market vendors
Food safety for farmers’ market, farm-gate and small-producer vendors. Not required by law and not equivalent to FOODSAFE Level 1, but some markets require it.
- Cost:
- $55 online.
- 9
Registering your business name
BC Registries
Trading under your own name needs no registration. Any other name means reserving it and registering within 3 months of first using it; a partnership registers within 3 months of forming. Incorporating is the alternative, and only a corporation, co-op or society gets exclusive use of its name.
- Cost:
- Name request $30 (reserved 56 days); sole proprietorship or partnership registration $40; incorporation $350, then a $43.39 annual report.
- 10
Safe Food for Canadians licence
Canadian Food Inspection Agency
Only if you pack or sell to other provinces
Needed to make, process, pack or label food that goes to another province, and to import food; a business that only exports needs one just to get a CFIA export certificate. Not needed for food made and sold only in BC, nor by a restaurant or caterer sending food straight to its customers.
- Time:
- Valid two years.
What you can sell
More for farms
When you’re ready to sell
Selling on Local Pass
A farm stand waits for passing traffic. On the Island Food Market, customers across the Island order your harvest for pickup or delivery.
Your own storefront
A storefront on the Island Food Market, with every product on its own page, built to be found on Google.
Your units
Each product carries its own unit and price — by the dozen, the loaf, the bunch or the pound.
Delivery, shipping and pickup
Local Pass drivers or your own delivery, plus shipping and pickup points with their own hours.
Local Pass is a platform that connects Island businesses and customers through its app and website — it is not a regulator. Every seller is responsible for the permits, licences and labels their food needs, and this guide is here to help you work out which ones.