Fourth-generation Delta farmer Peter Guichon has told Business in Vancouver that the system that allows governments to take land out of the agricultural land reserve (ALR) either needs to be radically changed or the ALR should be scrapped entirely.
“The ALR is a land bank set aside for any government to do what they want, when they want. That means settling treaties, building churches and schools,” he told BIV yesterday. “Since they do that, I say throw the whole thing out.”
Guichon said he would support the ALR if the same rules were in place for governments as they are for farmers.
Guichon, who is 58, co-owns Felix Farms and farms 1,500 acres of farmland across the Lower Mainland including 240 acres that he wants to sell to Emerson Real Estate Group owner Ron Emerson.
Emerson has placed an option on that acreage to buy it for $180,000 per acre within the next year and a half. He wants to then build warehouses on the land to serve nearby Deltaport and B.C.’s Gateway project.
Guichon’s land is across the street from some of the more than 500 acres that the B.C. government removed from the ALR in 2003 to give to the Tsawwassen First Nation (TFN) as part of its treaty settlement.
That land is slated to be redeveloped into a shopping mecca that will include Ivanhoe Cambridge’s 1.2 million-square-foot enclosed Tsawwassen Mills mall, and Property Development Group’s 600,000-square-foot adjacent outdoor Tsawwassen Commons mall.
“We’re surrounded by the TFN lands, and we’re not pleased about it,” he said.
Compounding his concerns is that Vancouver weather has not been ideal for farming the last few years.
Two years ago he lost his entire potato crop due to wet weather. Last year was a bit better, but he was not able to start planting potatoes until May 20.
His ideal would be to be able to plant his crop around April 20.
Cool weather so far this spring means that he hopes the ground will be ready to plant potatoes by the end of the week.
