Agricultural listservs have been buzzing lately with calls to prevent the agricultural land reserve (ALR) from being weakened as part of Minister Bill Bennett's core review. The cursory provincewide public input into the review ends October 16, with southwestern B.C. hearings already done. Bennett has said that everything is on the table and has singled out for attention ALR land "covered by rocks and trees" that is still being protected, preventing other uses that would help the economy.
One example he cited was a Cranbrook farming family that struggled to subdivide a small portion of its farmland to build a home for a younger family member about to inherit the farm. Ironically, allowing more on-site housing for working farmers is also high on the list of many of the ALR's most vociferous defenders. Their main goal is what Bennett should be focused on: how to make ALR land more agriculturally productive.
The ALR has saved farmland, but not farming. ALR lands are being used for sprawling rural mansions flanked by minimal farm activity. They're used for truck parking, parking for religious institutions, debris dumping, and – least productive of all – simple speculation. Even though exemptions from the ALR have slowed to a trickle, an estimated half of the Fraser Valley's ALR lands are being held fallow by speculators wary of demonstrating the lands' agricultural potential. They're patiently waiting for the ALR to be dismantled. Every sign of uncertainty about its future encourages them to drive land prices further out of reach of a new generation of farmers.
Into this field of controversy marches Century Group's Sean Hodgins and his Southlands proposal: 950 agriculture-focused homes on 20% of a 538-acre Tsawwassen farm best known for decades of disputed development proposals. Although the farm is not in the ALR, the plan goes to what promises to be a rowdy public hearing at the end of October, en route to a Metro Vancouver application for exclusion from the protected green zone.
While most of the media attention has been on opposition from Delta residents fearful of traffic and dumptruck intrusions and from farmland advocates opposed to any loss of any farmland, there's another issue that needs more understanding: how this variation of a farm-centred subdivision could be a model for a closer integration of urban and farming communities – and a strengthened local food economy.
If selected residential areas along the ALR edge were upzoned to subsidize community-based farms and local food production on adjacent farmlands, local residents would be growing and buying neighbourhood produce. This could both add another dimension to the ALR's productive capacity and reduce today's bitter frictions along the buffer zone between farmland and residences.
Local agricultural advocates are deeply divided on whether a farm-centred subdivision would work in practice – even though many do across the U.S. I've visited the working farm, the farmer training program, community gardens and neighbourhood farmers' market at the Prairie Crossing subdivision in Michigan where farmers and residents happily live side by side, feeding off each other's resources. Southlands' agricultural detractors say leased land is too uncertain for serious farming investment, labour-heavy community-based agriculture isn't economically feasible and you can't trust the new owners of the dedicated farmland to always promote farming. In addition to its proposed $9 million investment into irrigation and drainage improvements, Century Group may solve this objection by recommending that the 80% of the property slated for farming, parks and natural habitat be put back into the ALR.
After Bennett's core review, that could end up offering no real protection any more. That would be a major step backward for B.C. •
