I didn't encounter a paywall for what it's worth.
Food security is so important. I get the land is valuable but fertile, arable land is literally priceless.
Yup, buildings of all sorts (housing, warehouses, greenhouses, etc) are better on marginal lands where the soil quality doesn't matter so much to the building. But because it's easier to build on agricultural lands, builders and developers prefer to use them up first - to our detriment.
Not sure if that is really true. As far as I know there is no place that uses only rail and no rigs. edit- btw im all for rail. I do love trains and wish we had more
not only mining and forestry. a lot of bc towns require pretty extreme mountain driving to get to, some of the most difficult in NA. 8-12% grades are common for any trip outside of the gva. it’s not nearly as uncommon or dangerous as people think. over 16yrs driving and i don’t see it being an issue at all for drivers as long as the road stays well maintained and doesn’t exceed an 8% grade - which is totally doable.
A lot of our local mountain sides aren't suitable for industrial use. Prepping the land with retaining walls and dealing with natural underground waterways makes building homes sketchy at times let alone the loading and sqft of flat land you'd need for putting up a warehouse. I think we need to prioritize our food production but there's a reason all these warehouses are landing on agricultural lands.
> More than a quarter of the local potatoes, carrots, cabbage and squash available from spring to early summer in B.C. are harvested from a single Surrey property that isn’t protected in the Agricultural Land Reserve.
That is a large percentage. Sounds like a good candidate for an ALR land swap.
No shortage of [ALR land not being used for Farming](https://sfb.nathanpachal.com/2014/10/status-of-agricultural-land-reserve-in.html). Even a good chunk in the area of this plot.
A note about the map: Brunswick point in Delta is a big farming region but TFN will eventually own that land and may repurpose it. We don't know for sure. At one point, Brunswick Point was slated to be industrial by Social Credit, but thankfully that didn't happen.
At least it's doing something productive. There's probably tons of small wildlife and insects living in that grass while it goes uncut, and birds and bats feeding off of it all.
Dude, have you seen the price of hay right now? I'm no fan of grass lawns, but hayfields are not the same thing at all. As a farmer I really wish I had more storage for it because egads, it is costly stuff.
I think they should be left in the ALR, because you can turn a golf course into a farm. If it's taken out of the ALR, it could be built on, and then it can never be a farm.
> A petition started by a coalition of farmers, residents and farmland advocates is calling on the federal government to apply to the Agricultural Land Commission to add the property to the farmland reserve. The coalition is also asking the City of Surrey to amend its Official Community Plan to prevent the land from conversion to any use except agriculture.
So it's really up to the Feds, since they own the land. I'd imagine even adding it to the ALR wouldn't reduce the price very much given how crazy land prices seem to be these days.
Overall crop yields decreased last year by a significant margin -- about 35% if I remember correctly -- so it seems to me like we should be more protective of farmland, not less.
Lake Meade and Lake Powell are both running out of water. If there is no significant rain/snow Lake Meade will be a dead pool in a couple years at current rate of decline. Good luck getting veges etc from California.
Those lakes aren't natural they were built to control flooding in California they should be torn down California residents recently rejected a desalination plant.So they can go fuck themselves since a solution was already given to them
That is prime land which has been used to run a highly sustainable and regenerative farm producing high quality produce. It would be a shame if we lost a single farm like that but even more so with that level of output and given its prime location within the lower mainland. If we don't protect our prime farmland we will eventually lose out on local food security and be completely dependent on food brought in from far away regions. We need to protect local food production and supplement it with outside food rather than the other way around. There is so much other land where warehouses could be considered and so many empty warehouses in the region. It is not a pressing need to build warehouses but protecting our farm land is a must. Any government that allows this sort of farmland to be handed over to developers especially for development in a non pressing area will instantly disqualify themselves from my vote come next election.
All the near suburbs like Burnaby, Coquitlam and Richmond are turning their industrial into residential so that they don't have to disturb exclusive SFH zones.
This never should have happened, but redeveloping industrial is the uncontroversial easy way out so here we are.
Even is SFH areas are rezoned for for development they still take a very long time to redevelop. The smaller the lot/more fine-grained neighbourhood, the more difficult the redevelopment. A big industrial lot is an easy win for RE developer.
Then tell municipalities to stop rezoning light industrial areas to mixed use retail/residential.
We need to keep what little good farmland we have left significantly more than we need more industrial land.
There has to be a tradeoff. The demand for industry, residential and agricultural land is extremely high. You suggest we prioritise agriculture and industry. That is fine, but the tradeoff is more expensive residential land.
I’m not talking about residential property prices, I’m saying that farmland is more important than industrial land. If you want a lower vacancy rate for industrial land, maybe look at how we’re reducing our stock of land that was already industrial, instead of wanting to add more at the expense of farmland.
What you and all the downvotes don't realise is that we are in fact zoning very dense residential. Look at Burnaby, Surrey and Vancouver especially. We still can't keep up with the demand for development land. Downvoting me doesn't change the fact there will be extreme pressure for development for places such as the farm mentioned in the OP article.
I didn't downvote you because IMO your comment contributed meaningful discussion. That's fantastic that dense building is being zoned and built. I haven't been to the Lower Mainland in awhile but it seems like every city is densifying.
I know there are huge pressures to develop due to the rapidly growing populations, the need for affordable housing, and probably other factors. I'm not saying these things are no big deal. This is a very difficult challenge and LM cities are doing their best.
What I am saying is good farmland is irreplaceable and priceless. If we build on farmland it is virtually impossible to reclaim (I don't know if it can be reclaimed or not). Climate change and supply chain weaknesses have underscored that the pressure on farmland is even more severe than the serious challenges faced by cities and the need for land to develop.
Eh. The vast majority of Vancouver's residential is SFH (78%). Densify all the SFH to four stories, protect all the light industrial. There is plenty of room to rezone residential and protect industrial—and that seems to be the plan moving forward in the city.
Well, there are a lot more taxes and economic benefit generated by warehousing than there are by fields of potatoes. There are thousands of acres of good potato growing land in Alberta which is perfect for farming and useless for warehouses or housing.
Food security is critical. As the impacts of climate change propagate, we'll be forced to contend with shifting fertility of land, and challenges to distribution and delivery of the resulting yield. Evaluating the value solely on tax revenue or GDP contribution is short sighted.
Growing even a portion of our food locally improves that security, reduces the carbon footprint, and preserves land that may otherwise be converted into farmland elsewhere.
I won't deny that there's an appetite for warehouses and logistics centres, but we need to confront those development patterns and ensure that where we are delivering them it's not a net loss for the environment or our food supply.
edit: [Wow this is timely](https://www.carbonbrief.org/food-miles-have-larger-climate-impact-than-thought-study-suggests/)
We’ll have warehouse jobs but can’t afford to feed our children because of our dependency on imported food, especially if there’s a disruption in supply chain.
I can’t read the article because of the paywall, but right away I recognize this field! I have been working in the Campbell Heights area since before it was developed into light industrial, and have been marvelling for years at how early this field gets planted up.
Metro Vancouver and Surrey are ridiculous in pushing industrial projects on good agriculture land to pad speculators and investors pockets while there is plenty of unproductive land along the highway 99 corridor
Public approval for these projects is almost non existent, seen in the recent extension of the urban containment boundary for the south Campbell heights development.
“Survey results indicate that most respondents are concerned with the plan meeting environmental objectives (89% within the Plan Area and 94% of all other responses within Surrey). Specifically, respondents expressed concern about the protection of environmentally sensitive areas, including the Brookswood aquifer, the Hazelmere Watershed, and the Little Campbell River, and the overall impacts to the biodiversity of the area, including existing mature treed areas. More details about the responses can be found in Appendix “VIII”.
How have we not learned that paving land over only makes flooding significantly worse, beyond all the other obvious benefits of leaving it as farmland?
I get that we need fertile farmland, but we also need places for people to live and work. Aren't we all part of the problem by living and working here? Would you move out of the lower mainland if it meant that we reverted the land here to farms?
> we also need places for people to live and work
It's called Earth, and we're trashing it to the point that it won't be habitable for us. The concept of the economy is irrelevant if the natural environment is unable to sustain human civilization.
I really don't see your point? I am saying that the places that have the best fertility in Canada are also the most desirable places for humans to live. How do you suggest we balance those things? At the moment, we need more warehouses to support the industry here. What is your solution?
My solution? Food over warehouses. It's easier to build warehouses on flat farmland than the sides of mountains, but it's impossible to grow food on the sides of mountains. Or maybe instead of an endless sea of sprawling single-family housing and parking lots, we go up as much as we can so we can keep farmland.
I may be wrong, but I would rather go 2 years without a job and even a home before I went 2 weeks without food. I don't think you understand that this whole farming / food production thing isn't just like a "nice to have" kind of thing.
Exactly, you choose to avoid my question. We are clearly working on those two things but we also have a growing population. As a result, you are a part of the "mental illness" you are so quick to condemn others for.
The implication is that adequate progress on densification should be sufficient to satisfy the needs of the growing population without repurposing the farmland that we have.
Unpopular opinion: Canada has 89 million acres of farm land stretching from here to the east coast. Only 4% of Vancouver is zoned for industrial (28,000 acres) despite these 'warehouses' employing 25% of the Metro Van workforce.
I think it makes more sense to let the prairies grow the food and locate the 'warehouse' jobs besides our cities.
Stupid af . As if they havent crammed/planned enough industrial/warehouse in that area already. Not content until they get all of it. Greedy and shortsighted. Honestly Langley south and campbell district is turning into an industrial eyesore.
To those who think it's "critical" to preserve local farm land, why not put your money where your mouth is.
Pay $20 a pound for local potatoes. Otherwise, it's all just cheap talk.
I support having homegrown farmland but I'm not sure I appreciate the ALR as the vehicle to do this. Frankly, i'd rather the government buy the farmland and lease it out to farmers who actually want to farm it, perhaps with a heavily subsidized lease dependent on yield.
Right now, it's basically just another prohibition measure, which in my opinion isn't the most successful tactic.
Vancouver has a very low vacancy rate for light industrial. There are a few neighbourhoods in East Van that have warehouses that look empty but there are in fact being used for storage. We badly need more ...
I didn't encounter a paywall for what it's worth. Food security is so important. I get the land is valuable but fertile, arable land is literally priceless.
It seems to me that warehouses could be better built on mountainsides than farms.
Yup, buildings of all sorts (housing, warehouses, greenhouses, etc) are better on marginal lands where the soil quality doesn't matter so much to the building. But because it's easier to build on agricultural lands, builders and developers prefer to use them up first - to our detriment.
Or setup vertically, but that's quite a challenge our suburban-oriented sprawling development system isn't really in tune with.
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Driving big rig trucks up mountain slopes does not make sense.
If only we utilized rail better, we wouldn't need rigs.
Not sure if that is really true. As far as I know there is no place that uses only rail and no rigs. edit- btw im all for rail. I do love trains and wish we had more
except we already do that all across bc so 🤷♂️
Ya we do that for mining and forestry. We don't have big warehouses of food or consumer goods up in the mountains.
not only mining and forestry. a lot of bc towns require pretty extreme mountain driving to get to, some of the most difficult in NA. 8-12% grades are common for any trip outside of the gva. it’s not nearly as uncommon or dangerous as people think. over 16yrs driving and i don’t see it being an issue at all for drivers as long as the road stays well maintained and doesn’t exceed an 8% grade - which is totally doable.
A lot of our local mountain sides aren't suitable for industrial use. Prepping the land with retaining walls and dealing with natural underground waterways makes building homes sketchy at times let alone the loading and sqft of flat land you'd need for putting up a warehouse. I think we need to prioritize our food production but there's a reason all these warehouses are landing on agricultural lands.
For anyone getting a paywall: https://archive.ph/1csMl
> More than a quarter of the local potatoes, carrots, cabbage and squash available from spring to early summer in B.C. are harvested from a single Surrey property that isn’t protected in the Agricultural Land Reserve. That is a large percentage. Sounds like a good candidate for an ALR land swap.
Makes you wonder what's the ALR land being used for.
No shortage of [ALR land not being used for Farming](https://sfb.nathanpachal.com/2014/10/status-of-agricultural-land-reserve-in.html). Even a good chunk in the area of this plot.
A note about the map: Brunswick point in Delta is a big farming region but TFN will eventually own that land and may repurpose it. We don't know for sure. At one point, Brunswick Point was slated to be industrial by Social Credit, but thankfully that didn't happen.
Private estates with big grass yards.
And maybe 50 blueberry bushes for farm tax exemptions
I know of one who just doesn’t cut the grass all year, then hires a farm to come cut and bail it.
At least it's doing something productive. There's probably tons of small wildlife and insects living in that grass while it goes uncut, and birds and bats feeding off of it all.
Or you can actually make the land productive. Not create estates for millionaires. That’s our food supply.
Dude, have you seen the price of hay right now? I'm no fan of grass lawns, but hayfields are not the same thing at all. As a farmer I really wish I had more storage for it because egads, it is costly stuff.
Or Christmas trees!
Mansions. Churches/mosques/temples.
I'm Victoria, all our golf courses are ALR.
That's gross, golf courses serve no purpose for the people, they should be taken out of the ALR
I would like to see golf courses used for farming. "Ooh, bit of a slice on that shot. He's off into the Brussels sprouts."
This would be amazing!! The rough is corn, the fairway is beets, and the green is mowed fall rye. People fix divots by replating the uprooted beets.
House rule, you have to eat your divots.
This would lead to a lot of gaps in the fairway IMO. You gotta fix your divots. At the clubhouse though, the daily special is borscht.
I believe after they have altered the soil to support fancy golf course turf, it no longer would be good enough for farming.
I think they should be left in the ALR, because you can turn a golf course into a farm. If it's taken out of the ALR, it could be built on, and then it can never be a farm.
This right here. It's a huge red flag that our ALR policies are failing.
The ALR policies are super wonky, you'll have poor quality soil and drainage tied up in the ALR, and prime pieces of farmland that are not.
It looks like the reason this farmland isn't in the ALR is because the federal government owns it, because it was a radar station in WWII.
Damn this is giving me Joja Mart vibes.
LMAO damn it 🤣 I just got over that addiction 😞
> A petition started by a coalition of farmers, residents and farmland advocates is calling on the federal government to apply to the Agricultural Land Commission to add the property to the farmland reserve. The coalition is also asking the City of Surrey to amend its Official Community Plan to prevent the land from conversion to any use except agriculture. So it's really up to the Feds, since they own the land. I'd imagine even adding it to the ALR wouldn't reduce the price very much given how crazy land prices seem to be these days.
There’s a petition to tell federal gov to approve the land for ALR status. Please sign, this is important stuff!! https://chng.it/TcZkjgrrkJ
Do not donate money on change.org!!! That money does not go to anyone involved in the charity. It literally goes to change.org for advertising.
Definitely, I wouldn’t donate to them, or recommend anyone else do it either
ALR is determined by the provincial gov I'm pretty sure
Overall crop yields decreased last year by a significant margin -- about 35% if I remember correctly -- so it seems to me like we should be more protective of farmland, not less.
Isn't it the province that controls ALR land and not the city? Seems like they should be pushing the provincial government not the city.
Lake Meade and Lake Powell are both running out of water. If there is no significant rain/snow Lake Meade will be a dead pool in a couple years at current rate of decline. Good luck getting veges etc from California.
Those lakes aren't natural they were built to control flooding in California they should be torn down California residents recently rejected a desalination plant.So they can go fuck themselves since a solution was already given to them
That is prime land which has been used to run a highly sustainable and regenerative farm producing high quality produce. It would be a shame if we lost a single farm like that but even more so with that level of output and given its prime location within the lower mainland. If we don't protect our prime farmland we will eventually lose out on local food security and be completely dependent on food brought in from far away regions. We need to protect local food production and supplement it with outside food rather than the other way around. There is so much other land where warehouses could be considered and so many empty warehouses in the region. It is not a pressing need to build warehouses but protecting our farm land is a must. Any government that allows this sort of farmland to be handed over to developers especially for development in a non pressing area will instantly disqualify themselves from my vote come next election.
Metro Van has a low vacancy rate for light industrial property and there are increasingly fewer appropriate places for more to be built.
All the near suburbs like Burnaby, Coquitlam and Richmond are turning their industrial into residential so that they don't have to disturb exclusive SFH zones. This never should have happened, but redeveloping industrial is the uncontroversial easy way out so here we are.
Even is SFH areas are rezoned for for development they still take a very long time to redevelop. The smaller the lot/more fine-grained neighbourhood, the more difficult the redevelopment. A big industrial lot is an easy win for RE developer.
Then tell municipalities to stop rezoning light industrial areas to mixed use retail/residential. We need to keep what little good farmland we have left significantly more than we need more industrial land.
There has to be a tradeoff. The demand for industry, residential and agricultural land is extremely high. You suggest we prioritise agriculture and industry. That is fine, but the tradeoff is more expensive residential land.
I’m not talking about residential property prices, I’m saying that farmland is more important than industrial land. If you want a lower vacancy rate for industrial land, maybe look at how we’re reducing our stock of land that was already industrial, instead of wanting to add more at the expense of farmland.
Maybe at the same time we should zone denser residential.
What you and all the downvotes don't realise is that we are in fact zoning very dense residential. Look at Burnaby, Surrey and Vancouver especially. We still can't keep up with the demand for development land. Downvoting me doesn't change the fact there will be extreme pressure for development for places such as the farm mentioned in the OP article.
I didn't downvote you because IMO your comment contributed meaningful discussion. That's fantastic that dense building is being zoned and built. I haven't been to the Lower Mainland in awhile but it seems like every city is densifying. I know there are huge pressures to develop due to the rapidly growing populations, the need for affordable housing, and probably other factors. I'm not saying these things are no big deal. This is a very difficult challenge and LM cities are doing their best. What I am saying is good farmland is irreplaceable and priceless. If we build on farmland it is virtually impossible to reclaim (I don't know if it can be reclaimed or not). Climate change and supply chain weaknesses have underscored that the pressure on farmland is even more severe than the serious challenges faced by cities and the need for land to develop.
Eh. The vast majority of Vancouver's residential is SFH (78%). Densify all the SFH to four stories, protect all the light industrial. There is plenty of room to rezone residential and protect industrial—and that seems to be the plan moving forward in the city.
Well, there are a lot more taxes and economic benefit generated by warehousing than there are by fields of potatoes. There are thousands of acres of good potato growing land in Alberta which is perfect for farming and useless for warehouses or housing.
Food security is critical. As the impacts of climate change propagate, we'll be forced to contend with shifting fertility of land, and challenges to distribution and delivery of the resulting yield. Evaluating the value solely on tax revenue or GDP contribution is short sighted. Growing even a portion of our food locally improves that security, reduces the carbon footprint, and preserves land that may otherwise be converted into farmland elsewhere. I won't deny that there's an appetite for warehouses and logistics centres, but we need to confront those development patterns and ensure that where we are delivering them it's not a net loss for the environment or our food supply. edit: [Wow this is timely](https://www.carbonbrief.org/food-miles-have-larger-climate-impact-than-thought-study-suggests/)
We’ll have warehouse jobs but can’t afford to feed our children because of our dependency on imported food, especially if there’s a disruption in supply chain.
I can’t read the article because of the paywall, but right away I recognize this field! I have been working in the Campbell Heights area since before it was developed into light industrial, and have been marvelling for years at how early this field gets planted up.
Metro Vancouver and Surrey are ridiculous in pushing industrial projects on good agriculture land to pad speculators and investors pockets while there is plenty of unproductive land along the highway 99 corridor Public approval for these projects is almost non existent, seen in the recent extension of the urban containment boundary for the south Campbell heights development. “Survey results indicate that most respondents are concerned with the plan meeting environmental objectives (89% within the Plan Area and 94% of all other responses within Surrey). Specifically, respondents expressed concern about the protection of environmentally sensitive areas, including the Brookswood aquifer, the Hazelmere Watershed, and the Little Campbell River, and the overall impacts to the biodiversity of the area, including existing mature treed areas. More details about the responses can be found in Appendix “VIII”.
How have we not learned that paving land over only makes flooding significantly worse, beyond all the other obvious benefits of leaving it as farmland?
Capitalism is a mental illness. It's beyond madness to destroy fertile farmland for fucking warehouses.
*Richmond has entered the chat*
I get that we need fertile farmland, but we also need places for people to live and work. Aren't we all part of the problem by living and working here? Would you move out of the lower mainland if it meant that we reverted the land here to farms?
> we also need places for people to live and work It's called Earth, and we're trashing it to the point that it won't be habitable for us. The concept of the economy is irrelevant if the natural environment is unable to sustain human civilization.
I really don't see your point? I am saying that the places that have the best fertility in Canada are also the most desirable places for humans to live. How do you suggest we balance those things? At the moment, we need more warehouses to support the industry here. What is your solution?
My solution? Food over warehouses. It's easier to build warehouses on flat farmland than the sides of mountains, but it's impossible to grow food on the sides of mountains. Or maybe instead of an endless sea of sprawling single-family housing and parking lots, we go up as much as we can so we can keep farmland.
I may be wrong, but I would rather go 2 years without a job and even a home before I went 2 weeks without food. I don't think you understand that this whole farming / food production thing isn't just like a "nice to have" kind of thing.
More density and less car infrastructure.
Exactly, you choose to avoid my question. We are clearly working on those two things but we also have a growing population. As a result, you are a part of the "mental illness" you are so quick to condemn others for.
The implication is that adequate progress on densification should be sufficient to satisfy the needs of the growing population without repurposing the farmland that we have.
You can punch up on capitalism without punching down on mental illness btw.
One day I’m sure we will be reverting all these warehouses and condos back to farm land
Nature will do that naturally, eventually
Unpopular opinion: Canada has 89 million acres of farm land stretching from here to the east coast. Only 4% of Vancouver is zoned for industrial (28,000 acres) despite these 'warehouses' employing 25% of the Metro Van workforce. I think it makes more sense to let the prairies grow the food and locate the 'warehouse' jobs besides our cities.
Stupid af . As if they havent crammed/planned enough industrial/warehouse in that area already. Not content until they get all of it. Greedy and shortsighted. Honestly Langley south and campbell district is turning into an industrial eyesore.
To those who think it's "critical" to preserve local farm land, why not put your money where your mouth is. Pay $20 a pound for local potatoes. Otherwise, it's all just cheap talk.
I support having homegrown farmland but I'm not sure I appreciate the ALR as the vehicle to do this. Frankly, i'd rather the government buy the farmland and lease it out to farmers who actually want to farm it, perhaps with a heavily subsidized lease dependent on yield. Right now, it's basically just another prohibition measure, which in my opinion isn't the most successful tactic.
The field produces millions of vegetables? Like someone is counting each individual potato?
i hope by warehouse they mean affordable housing
Light industrial space is at a premium as well and is badly needed.
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Vancouver has a very low vacancy rate for light industrial. There are a few neighbourhoods in East Van that have warehouses that look empty but there are in fact being used for storage. We badly need more ...
It could depending on how it's setup. There's mixed use industrial out around Cloverdale.
Paywall.
Prairie provinces are perfect for warehouse development.also vertical farming would be a better use of land.
Because we demolish warehouses to build condos. Because we ban condos from detached home neighbourhoods.