Keep Farmland For Farming

Spring 2009

Last summer a few hundred people sat down for a 100-mile dinner at the Semiahmoo Fish and Game Club to celebrate the 35th birthday of the Agricultural Land Reserve (ALR). While there was singing and a cake, the party had a poignant and somber note as well. Harold Steves, often referred to as the grandfather of the ALR, related the story of the Steves’ family farm. “Our farm was in the dairy business from 1877 to 1962. In 1958 the City of Richmond quietly rezoned about 1200 acres of farmland in Richmond from agricultural to residential. There were new milk industry requirements brought in that year and our barn didn’t qualify—the ceilings where too low, the aisles not wide enough, and we needed to switch to bulk storage tanks

When my father went to apply for a permit to build a new barn, he was denied on the basis that the land was zoned residential.”
His father switched to raising beef cattle, but in 1968 the BC Assessment Authority deemed that this was not an adequate agricultural pursuit, and they slapped the higher residential taxes on the land. At this point his father understandably sold off most of the land. Many other farms in Richmond closed down in roughly the same manner.

This story is not unique to Richmond. All the major agricultural areas in BC have experienced similar conflicts between farmland and municipal development. Steves got together with several friends to begin a series of kitchen table meetings in Cloverdale, Langley, Delta and Whalley, in an attempt to find some creative ways of dealing with these issues. “We were looking at ways to protect farming, and reflected on some examples in Saskatchewan, where cities had bought up land around the urban area in order to contain urban sprawl,” he recalls. Steves and his group drafted a resolution to bring in a land bank in BC, a resolution they later brought to the NDP convention. In 1973 Dave Barrett and the NDP government enacted the Agricultural Land Reserve (ALR) Act.

The ALR Act is regarded by many as one of the most forward thinking pieces of legislation created by any government in Canada. Solicitor General and Former Minister of Agriculture John van Dongen, states that, “The fact that the [ALR] Act has survived 35 years through many governments is a testament to the appropriateness and necessity of that public policy.”

However, even with the ALR in place, the pressure to develop farmland remains unabated. Hamish Crawford, a farmer in North Saanich, has seen most of the large family farms disappear along with much of the farming infrastructure over the last 18 years. He is alarmed at the disregard that municipal politicians have for the ALR. “In North Saanich, the municipal government doesn’t even apply to the land commission to change the land from farm use. We’ve got schools on ALR land, Rec centres on ALR land. This allows them to say they haven’t taken any land out of the land reserve.”

There is a provision in the ALR Act that allows land to be removed, or excluded, from the ALR. The original intention was to give the Commission means to correct boundaries or remove land that was unsuited for agriculture. It has, however, led to a never-ending stream of exclusion applications for everything from truck parking facilities to baseball fields and, recently, to settle aboriginal land claims.

Exclusion applications are usually backed up with statements about municipal or community need. The constant spectre of “not enough land for growth” is often seen as a convenient excuse for poor planning, according to many of the more forward-looking urban planners. “With creative planning and creative zoning there is more than enough land to accommodate all the growth that Metro Vancouver is expecting,” says Ione Smith of Smart Growth BC. “The flip side,” she continues, “is also true—if we pave over all the farmland and there is a crisis, where will we get our food?” Barry Smith (no relation to Ione), a former policy planner for the Commission, believes that a fundamental shift in our view of farmland is necessary. “Most people,” he says, “do not see farmland as a resource at all, but rather a commodity. Like clean air, clean water and shelter, farmland should be considered a cornerstone resource fundamental to civilization.”

Herb Barbolet, a long time friend of Steves and founder of FarmFolk/CityFolk, notes that the Commission has more pressing work to do than simply process applications. “When the Act came in it had two parts,” he says. “One was the protection of the land reserve. The other equally important part was protecting the farmers and farming. It is absolutely essential that we work much harder and have much more consciousness about working with farmers, and to ensure that there are farms and future farmers.” The ALR is a remarkable and precious community asset. It continues to exist not simply because of any one person, party or government. As Barbolet observes, “we have the agricultural land reserve because visionaries created it, but also, we have it because ordinary citizens and non-governmental organizations have been fighting tooth and nail over the years to keep it.”

It is vital that all levels of government and the general public work together to keep our farmland for farming.