74,000+ acre B.C. ranch up for auction in August

Jul 10, 2024

Bidding for the Hat Creek Ranch Collection starts at $5.9 million

By Diego Flammini
Staff Writer
Farms.com

A large B.C. ranch is heading to the auction market next month.

Bidding for the Hat Creek Ranch Collection, which spans 74,716 acres, begins at $5.9 million when the CLHbid.com auction begins on Aug 15.

To put the ranch’s size into context, Parliament Hill sits on about 22 acres of land.

This means more than 3,300 Parliament Hills could fit onto the ranch.

The property includes multiple homes, a shop, barns and a working cattle area.

In addition, the ranch is equipped to continue with livestock production.

“Hat Creek Ranch Collection is a farmstead where the pastures and mountain peaks stretch as far as the eye can see; it supports significant AUMs and boasts irrigated feed to ensure a sustainable and prosperous operation,” the sale description says. “The Upper Plateau offers robust pastureland where it’s not uncommon to find grass that grows to a horse’s belly in the late summer - just when a rancher needs it most.”

For ranchers looking to raise livestock on the land, a livestock option is available.

For $3,000, a buyer can purchase 420 bred cows. Or for $4,000, a buyer can acquire 420 cow calf pairs.

The herd is primarily Angus, and all females retained for breeding are 100 per cent home raised.

“Cows have been exposed to Angus, Simmental/Angus, and Charolais herd bulls. Currently 467 mother cows that will be paired back to 420+/-,” the livestock page says.

There’s also an equipment option available for $375,000.

Equipment in the bundle includes five John Deere tractors, trucks, ATVs, mowers, a John Deere 8300 seeder, a New Holland 185 T/S manure spreader and more.

Purchasing the ranch would also mean owning a piece of B.C. history.

Philip Parke came to B.C. in 1862 from Ireland looking to capitalize on the Cariboo Gold Rush.

He planned on making his way from Vancouver to Barkerville (a near nine-hour drive) but ended up purchasing the Bonaparte Ranch at Cache Creek that year.

In 1900 he purchased more land and joined it with the Bonaparte Ranch.

In 2012, Gordon Parke accepted an award on the family’s behalf to the British Columbia Hall of Fame in the category of Pioneer Rancher.

The ranch made its way through generations of Parkes, with Brian Parke representing the fifth generation to live on and manage the ranch.

Video: The 15-Year Bet Behind Every New Variety!

Canada is trying to decide how much agricultural research capacity it can afford to lose. Brian Rossnagel believes the better question is whether the country can afford to rebuild it.

The longtime barley and oat breeder makes the case with a simple fact about his profession: the consequences of today’s decisions may not become visible for 10 or 15 years.

“Pick the right parents. That’s the biggest thing,” Rossnagel says. “If you pick the wrong parents, you’re not going to get anywhere—and you don’t know that until 10 years, 15 years later.”

That warning carries particular weight as Agriculture and Agri-Food Canada moves to reduce spending and streamline parts of its science operations. The department’s 2026–27 plan anticipates the loss of approximately 665 positions by 2028–29 and says some research will be reduced where capacity exists in academia or industry. AAFC says the changes will make its science operations more cost-effective over the long term.

For Canada’s seed industry, Rossnagel’s career illustrates what is at stake.

This fall, the retired University of Saskatchewan breeder will be inducted into the Canadian Agricultural Hall of Fame. During his 35-year career at the Crop Development Centre, he helped develop more than 100 barley and oat varieties, including CDC Austenson—one of Western Canada’s most widely grown feed barleys. His induction recognizes not only those varieties, but the collaboration and research system that made them possible.

Rossnagel is quick to emphasize that none of it was the work of one person.

“The first thing I thought about was all the other people who contributed to whatever success I and my program had over the years,” he says. “We know that it’s not an individual who does this. It’s a group—a team.”

That team extends well beyond the breeder whose name appears beside a variety. It includes technicians, pathologists, quality specialists, statisticians, regional testing sites, seed growers and industry partners. It also includes the breeders who came before and those who will carry the germplasm forward.

CDC Fraser barley, for example, moved through three breeding careers. Its parents came from Brian Harvey’s program. Rossnagel advanced the material after Harvey retired, and Aaron Beattie later guided it through registration and release.

That kind of handoff is normal in plant breeding. The person who makes the original cross may never see the resulting variety reach farmers.

It also explains why lost research capacity cannot simply be switched back on when budgets improve.

“If you shut it off, it’s very, very difficult—and particularly costly—to start it up again,” Rossnagel says. “If you have to start from scratch, it’s going to be at least 10 years before anybody notices whether you’re getting anything done or not.”

The concern is not simply how many experimental lines Canada can process. Modern equipment, statistical tools and genetic technologies allow today’s breeding programs to evaluate tens of thousands of lines—far more than Rossnagel could handle when he entered the field in the early 1970s.

But efficiency and automation do not generate every idea.

“If you pare back down, and instead of having six or seven individual scientists concentrating on wheat breeding, you go down and say three people could handle all this, well, that’s half the ideas gone,” he says. “Particularly if you happen to lose the three people who had the really neat and innovative ideas, boy, that’s a problem.”

It is a timely distinction for Canadian agriculture. Consolidating programs may preserve the volume of material moving through a system, at least initially. It may not preserve the diversity of thinking, regional knowledge or willingness to pursue unconventional crosses.

That regional knowledge matters because Canadian agriculture is not one uniform production environment. A variety suited to southern Alberta may face different disease, moisture and maturity pressures than one grown in Manitoba, Ontario or Atlantic Canada.

“Agriculture is applied biology,” Rossnagel says. “Biology, all around the Earth, moves from the poles to the equator. It does not move from Newfoundland to B.C. like politics do.”