The imminent opening of the new Port Mann Bridge, the expanded Highway 1, and the South Perimeter Road in Delta are not just going to speed up vehicle trips around the region. They’re also an unintended stealth attack on the much-beloved but much-misunderstood agricultural land reserve (ALR).
Old-timers (yes, you are) will remember its bitter implementation in 1974, when B.C.’s first NDP government froze 11 million acres of agricultural land in the province to stop rampant subdivision sprawl over rich fertile soils. Near-riots ensued on the steps of the legislature from landowners who were stripped of the future development profits from their farmland. Today, polls show overwhelming support for the ALR, even among farmers. In spite of the removal of 9% of the ALR land base over the years, recent exclusions from the ALR are near their lowest levels since 1974 – but highways, port uses and treaty exemptions continue to erode it. In Surrey, no land has been excluded since council ruled in 2003 that any land coming out had to be replaced with twice as much going in. The expanded highways through all this farmland come on top of other long-standing pressures on the ALR.
The essential paradox is summed up by Delta farmer Terry Bremner, owner of 55 acres near Highway 99 where he grows blueberries and hay and runs a bottling plant, Wellbrook Winery and a retail store. A lot of farmers are losing money, he says, but one way they get by is by remortgaging their properties based on rising land values.
Farmland in his area sold for $20,000 an acre 10 years ago. Today it’s around $80,000 to $100,000 an acre. In parts of Surrey, it’s up to $200,000 an acre.
“You can’t pay $100,000 an acre for farmland and pay it back from farming. It just can’t be done,” said Bremner.
Those prices are driven by speculators and investors who are buying up farmland in the expectation that someday it will no longer be farmland. Yet we’re protecting farmland because we want the security of being able to help feed ourselves.
So how do we save farmers as well as farmland?
A lot of farmers are saving themselves with off-farm work and illegal uses of ALR land. Bremner drove me around his Delta neighbourhood past non-compliant landfill operations, truck storage yards; a barn-like structure used for storing numerous RVs, and of course the palatial homes with just enough farm activity to qualify as a hobby farm. He’d like to see real farmers allowed to build more homes for family members, and even put some form of light industrial businesses on a small portion of farmland.
Surrey is taking that advice to heart. Thanks to a ground-breaking study by Kwantlen Polytechnic University’s Institute for Sustainable Horticulture, they’ve discovered that almost a third of Surrey’s extensive ALR lands (which make up 15% of the Lower Mainland’s farmland) is used for non-food-growing purposes: golf courses, hobby farms, tree nurseries, riding stables and the like. They looked at the parts of that unused land readily feasible for agriculture and concluded that Surrey could more than double the land the city currently has in berry production. If the city follows through on Kwantlen’s proposed “small-scale, human-intensive, direct market agriculture model,” those underused lands could satisfy Surrey’s entire seasonal demand for 29 commonly consumed crops and animal products, create around 2,500 jobs and more than double Surrey’s $153 million farm industry.
Without that kind of bold rethinking, the ALR is doomed to be a pleasant temporary green space for urban fantasies and rural struggles, awaiting its inevitable surrender to economic pressure for other uses. •
