Agriculture Assessment Study

The Agricultural Assessment Study (Phase 3) Draft report was tabled on November 17, 2009 to the Committee.

Click here to see the final report by Planscape, the Town's consultant.

The Draft report recognizes the provincial Greenbelt Act and the Growth Plan.

The Action Plan for Agriculture can be found starting on page 17 of the Draft report. The report's recommendations focus on
four elements of farming in Markham, specifically:

• Encouraging farming in the whitebelt area of North Markham until the land is phased in for new urban growth.
• Seek out a supportive and balanced approach to achieving the goals of farming and enhancing the natural environment in the Rouge Park.
• The need to create policies to reflect long-term agricultural in the Greenbelt, outside of the Rouge Park, and the efforts required by senior government to achieve sustainable agricultural land use there.
• Identification of a number of specific detailed recommendations to facilitate farming in Markham.

Of particular importance is that the Agricultural Assessment Study (Phase 3) Draft report does not mention the creation of a Foodbelt, nor taking action to add the lands in North Markham to the provincial Greenbelt, through the use of the Growing the Greenbelt process, as being necessary to protect farming in Markham

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The BC Agricultural Land Reserve: A Critical Assessment
Executive Summary

British Columbians have grappled with land use restrictions that rank among Canada’s most severe since the Agricultural Land Reserve (ALR) was established in 1973. The rationale for denying citizens the full use of 4.7 million hectares of property has shifted over time, from rescuing the “family farm” to preserving “green space” and, most recently, protecting the “local” food supply. The costs of this social engineering, which include soaring housing prices resulting from a scarcity of land for development and the incalculable loss of property owners’ economic freedom, are substantial. This paper examines some of these costs in order to promote a re-evaluation of the government’s excessive interference in the agricultural sector.

Champions of the ALR claim that the land use controls are necessary to ensure a “local” food supply. But BC consumers have shown an undeniable preference for greater choice. The vast majority of BC consumers buy great quantities of imports and base their purchase decisions on a range of legitimate factors, including price, variety, and convenience, rather than product origin alone. Indeed, after three decades of the ALR regime, BC farmers produce just one-third of the food needed in the province to meet the standards of a “healthy” diet (British Columbia, Ministry of Agriculture and Lands, 2006).

The land scarcity created by the ALR has rendered Vancouver housing the most “severely unaffordable” of any major city in the 265 metropolitan markets across Canada, the United States, Australia, New Zealand, the United Kingdom, and Ireland, as analyzed by Wendell Cox and Hugh Pavletich (2009) in their fifth annual International Housing Affordability Survey. Only Honolulu, Hawaii, and Australia’s Gold and Sunshine Coasts were costlier. Indeed, according to the survey, all of Canada’s “severely unaffordable” markets were in British Columbia, and none of the “affordable” markets were located in the province.

Contrary to the intent of the ALR’s architects, the land reserve has not halted the decline in the number of BC farms or the loss of “family farms.” Nor has it nurtured a new generation of farmers. In fact, the number of farms in British Columbia has declined 9% in the past decade (British Columbia, Ministry of Agriculture and Lands, 2007). The proportion of owner-operators also is falling: between 1986 and 2006, the total amount of BC farmland rented or leased grew nearly 35% (Statistics Canada, 2008d). In Metro Vancouver, where proponents once claimed the ALR would prove most effective, there has been a 66% decline in the number of farmers under the age of 35 over the past 10 years. As a Metro Vancouver Sustainability Report notes, “This would suggest that young people do not consider farming a viable economic venture or find the cost of entering the market prohibitive” (Metro Vancouver, 2009).

The very premise of the ALR is anachronistic. Advances in agronomy and biotechnology have dramatically increased yields, thereby easing demand for farmland. For example, reflecting land substitution, BC greenhouse area grew 305% between 1986 and 2006 (Statistics Canada, 2008c).

The existence of the land reserve is largely based on the notion that locally grown agricultural products are inherently healthier, safer, and more environmentally friendly, and that they are a necessary component of a reliable and secure food supply. This belief is known as “localism.” But a simple adherence to “food miles” [1] does not account for the variety of “inputs,” such as energy, irrigation and fertilizer, that are necessary to grow food. Researchers have discovered that the most significant “cost” of food miles, by a large margin, is consumers’ shopping trips to the store and not the commercial distribution of food. Furthermore, the more consumers rely on unprocessed, locally grown agricultural products—thereby necessitating more frequent trips to the store and longer trips to farms and farmers’ markets—the more food miles increase.

The localism movement also fails to account for the “comparative advantages” of Canada’s trading partners (i.e., the ability of other countries to produce products or services more efficiently and at lower cost). These advantages allow Canadians to enjoy plentiful quantities of coffee and bananas from Columbia, wine and cheese from France, gin from Britain, and rice from India, among other imports. Likewise, Canada produces a variety of products more efficiently than others elsewhere. Agriculture exports from BC, which totaled $1.6 billion in 2008 (BC Stats, 2009a), generate income for farm investment and employment.

Architects of the land reserve evidently distrusted the market to provide adequate food supplies for BC residents. But there is plenty of evidence that the farm sector was expanding to meet the demands of a growing population long before the land reserve was imposed. Even in the midst of a post-World War II housing boom, farm area in British Columbia actually increased 29% between 1951 and 1976 (Statistics Canada, 2009a). Between 1921 and 1976, land area for growing vegetables increased 604%, the number of cattle increased 230%, and the number of chickens increased 397% (Statistics Canada, 2009a). In fact, the amount of farmland dedicated to field crops and vegetables was greater before the creation of the Agricultural Land Reserve than after.

Click Here for the full Report on The BC Agricultural Land Reserve: A Critical Assessment

Click Here for the Globe and Mail report on Farmers fleeing Ontario’s Greenbelt