The Agricultural Land Reserve (ALR) has always been contentious. When it was introduced by B.C.’s first NDP government in the heady days of 1973, thousands rallied against it on the lawn of the legislature, and farm leaders urged farmers to protest by not planting crops.
In the early 1990s, the BC Fruit Growers’ Association and the BC Federation of Agriculture both passed resolutions demanding its abolition. But by 1997, 90% of British Columbians felt government should limit urban development to protect farmers and farmland, and 72% believed it should be difficult or very difficult to remove land from the ALR.
That doesn’t seem to be a view shared by Energy Minister Bill Bennett, who is suggesting in his core review of the ALR – launched out of the blue – that decisions about northern ALR lands should be in the hands of the BC Oil and Gas Commission and “marginal” ALR lands with lower-quality soils in the Kootenays, Cariboo and the northeast should be converted to other uses.
Those who shrug off food security concerns and say we should rely on imported food belittle the scope and potential of B.C.’s $11.7 billion, recession-proof, steadily growing agricultural industry. According to the B.C. government, food and beverage processing is the largest manufacturing industry in the province. In the BIV Book of Lists, eight of the top 20 manufacturers in the Lower Mainland are food processors.
Kwantlen Polytechnic University estimated that just putting Surrey’s idle ALR lands into full production would create almost 2,500 jobs and more than double Surrey’s agriculture industry. A critical reassessment of that study still came up with a potential increase of 567 full-time-equivalent jobs.
ALR and food security detractors also assume that we will always be able to buy affordable imported food even though it is dependent on fantasies like continuing subsidies; cheap water; stable fossil fuel transportation costs; unpriced pollution, soil erosion and GHG emission costs; a stable climate; and willing exporters.
Countries that have experienced imported food shortages have a different view. In Denmark, Norway, France and to a lesser extent Germany, only active farmers can buy agricultural land, which keeps prices down.
A restriction like that would achieve one of the original goals of B.C.’s ALR: to protect farming as well as farmland.
“The single most important factor in successfully preserving farmland is to preserve the farmer,” says the BC Agricultural Council.
The ALR has been forever fraught with friction along its boundaries. One of the justifications for removing prime ALR lands in the Lower Mainland is that new land was being added to the reserve outside the Lower Mainland. Now those lands are being lined up for “other uses.”
There are, actually, other agricultural-related uses that don’t need prime soil or new ALR boundaries or rodeo bleachers: horse raising, poultry barns, greenhouses, Christmas tree lots, floriculture...
Real estate development on ALR lands is often touted as a missed economic opportunity. But what that overlooks is a U.S. study of 150 counties that found that for every dollar of taxes raised by residential developments, public costs were $1.16, whereas lands used for agriculture cost only $0.35 for every dollar of taxes.
The best way to make the most of ALR farmland’s economic potential is to start enforcing existing rules. Then freeze exemptions. That would immediately lower land costs for farmers. Then tax residential estate uses of farmland at residential tax rates and require new homes on ALR lands to be sited away from the centre of the property.
Minister Bennett should be strengthening the ALR, not weakening it. •
