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The Agriculture Land Reserve and social contract

David Zirnhelt’s column to the Free Press
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Ranch Musings columnist David Zirnhelt. (File photo)

Fifty years ago - this is the 50th Anniversary - the Agriculture Land Reserve was created by the government of B.C. because in 1973, 6,000 hectares of agricultural land annually was being converted to non-agriculture use.

Much of it was in the Lower Mainland which contains some of the best agricultural land in Canada.

In a move to stop any last-minute speculation (people buying farm land for the purpose of flipping it for development), a freeze on subdivisions was put in place until a reserve could be legally established.

I think this move by the B.C. government contributed deeply to our move back home from Ottawa to begin building our own ranch on the small part of our family ranch that remained in our hands.

My uncle and aunt still owned the rest of the ranch which my dad bought in 1941.

Happily, most of the rest of the ranch is in family ownership. My dad’s family moved to the Cariboo after seven years of drought in North Dakota and looked to this area as a Promised Land; at least the grass was greener here.

Some of the mapping of soils was only adequate to the task of setting up the Agricultural Land Reserve (ALR).

There were marginal lands (Class 5) and some better lands that were left out of the reserve and poorer lands included that might now warrant putting a plow to and farming.

However, the purpose of the Reserve was to zone whole farms and ranches as areas to farm knowing that developments of heavy industry and housing was not compatible with farming and ranching.

Indeed, in the 1990s another government (NDP) enacted a Farm Practices Protection (Right to Farm) Act, to ensure that recent neighbours to farms could not charge the farmer with nuisance and shut down the farm. That is, as long as the farm was using “normal” (good) farming practises.

In our end of the Beaver Valley there was no ALR and the four or five ranches in the area wanted to be included in the Reserve to keep the area in farm use and not allow other uses incompatible with ranching.

The Land Commission allowed us in. Some neighbours wanted also to protect some of the marginal lands which was spring pasture on Crown land.

Many people objected to being zoned to keep the land in farm use and not allowing subdivision to earn money by selling parcels of land. These people felt that government “expropriated” the value of their land.

We have to remember that the reason there is private land is mostly because it was allotted to settlers for farming purposes.

The deal with the sales of land from the Crown to individuals was that if the landowner “farmed” the land, maybe fenced it, built a house and garden, then they could buy it.

This arrangement constituted a “social contract” between government and the individual homesteader. It has been the practise of government to “lease to purchase” land for agriculture if the arable land is cleared and prepared for seeding.

When the ALR was created, the intent was that government would continue to support farming and farmers, not just the land. International trade agreements created the end to direct subsidization of farming and ranching.

Thus, farm “income assurance” programs were halted so importing countries would not challenge the products as being produced with subsidization, making the importing countries’ producers uncompetitive. Monies previously devoted to subsidies were turned over to farm producer organizations to “invest” in production method improvement.

Should B.C. want to improve the food security of its citizens, then attention needs to be paid to not only keeping the farmland base in farm production but also to supporting the recruitment of new farmers and ensuring the opportunity for profitable farm businesses.

At one point in recent history, B.C. was farming only about 50 per cent of the farmland and importing about the same amount of its food.

Having the farmland base protected is still a good idea for promoting food security.

David Zirnhelt is a rancher in the Cariboo Chilcotin


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