WILMOT — The head of a farm lobby group representing about 100 farmers across the province says Nova Scotians will have to pay more for food and may face food shortages if farmers are forced out of business by increased operating costs.

"Food prices are going to escalate. They need to," Lloyd Evans, an Annapolis Valley farmer and the president of Horticulture Nova Scotia, said in a recent interview on his nearly 200-hectare farm in Wilmot, near Middleton.


...He said irrigation costs have doubled because some equipment used to pump water into fields uses up to 23 litres of fuel per hour.

"It’s like having your bank account attached to a fuel line; just draining the money out of it," Mr. Evans said.

Farmers are also facing steep increases in the cost of fertilizer, packaging materials and labour.

"We are going to lose farmers," he said.