What an ironic coincidence that within one week, two political decisions were made that have the potential to radically change the viability of agriculture in B.C.
The first was the B.C. government's short-sighted, impulsive move to shake up the Agricultural Land Reserve (ALR) by dividing the province into two zones, letting regional decision-makers decide on boundary adjustments, and introducing social and economic criteria to decisions on protecting farmland in one of the zones.
The main instigator of the provincial changes, Minister Bill Bennett, had a point when challenged by The Tyee's Bill Tieleman on his lack of consultation: “You can't have a substantial, rational, non-political debate about the Agricultural Land Commission [ALC] in British Columbia – you know damn well you can't!”
With 95% public support for preserving farmland, taking on the ALR is bound to arouse emotions. But Bennett's haphazard revamp of the ALC was a step into the manure pile, angering the BC Agriculture Council, the Pacific Regional Society of Soil Science, the BC Food Systems Network, several municipalities and every environmental organization in the province.
As it happens, there has just been a substantial, rational, non-political debate about the ALC, conducted by the ALC chairman, Richard Bullock. It came up with recommendations based on advancing agriculture and farming, rather than pleasing random angry constituents in Kootenay East.
Leaked emails have revealed that Bullock cautioned Bennett about his assumptions that the most important agricultural land was in the more protected south coast, Vancouver Island and Okanagan regions.
The remaining (less protected) northern and eastern regions in Zone 2, including the Kootenays, have six times as much Class 1-4 soil. Bullock also warned that “regional panels” are code for removing land from the ALR.
Where Bennett said he was responding to ranchers and farmers in his constituency, Bullock noted that “the vast majority of applications [for exemptions] are submitted by owners of ALR land that neither farm nor ranch the land.”
Which brings us to the other landmark decision affecting agricultural land: Metro Vancouver board's approval (except for the formality of a final reading) of the highly contested Southlands development in Tsawwassen. Century Group's Sean Hodgins has been working for almost eight years to rezone the 425-acre farm to allow 850 housing units in return for deeding 80% of the land to the municipality for parks, natural habitat and agriculture.
This development offers the first creative approach to promoting and protecting agriculture since the ALR was set up in 1974 with the mandate to do just that. What the ALC has never been able to do is move beyond protecting land to making farming truly viable.
At Southlands, the agricultural portion of the formerly ALR land – a 300-acre “community farm”– is handed over to Delta to manage in perpetuity for maximum agricultural production. Some of the proceeds from the housing development – including $9 million to upgrade irrigation – will be invested at no taxpayer expense to enable higher value, locally oriented food production that would otherwise never have been possible. This model plants the seeds for desperately needed creative solutions to economically sustainable farming on overpriced land close to urban areas. More because of moves like Minister Bennett's than Hodgins', much of the ALR land around the urban boundary fetches speculative prices, in the hopes that one day the boundary will come down, paving the way for residential and commercial zoning. If ALR landowners want exemptions in return for truly increasing local food production, let's look at it. But the primary use has to be growing food – not rodeo grounds, mansions or gas drilling.
