The Agricultural Land Reserve in the Lower Mainland is under intense and growing threat. If the Liberal government truly valued job creation and the will of British Columbia’s citizens, they would freeze exclusions from the ALR and enact tax reform to bring unused farmland into production.

Farmland protection is wildly popular; a 2008 Ipsos Reid poll found that 95 per cent of respondents favoured preserving our farmland.

However, there is a concerted effort underway in the Lower Mainland to misinform the public about how critical the ALR is to our region’s economy, food system and culture.

We can expect the next few years to be the defining moment for the future of our farmland, and the choices we make will shape the region for the next century.

The first misconception being repeated by opponents of the ALR is that agriculture isn’t viable in a small, urban region such as the Lower Mainland.

It is true that our region has only 0.2 per cent of Canada’s arable land, but that tiny amount generates 4.5 per cent of Canada’s total farm gate receipts.

Our climate and soil are perfect for farming; Lower Mainland farms return over $18,000 of receipts per acre, compared to $8,000 for the next most productive region, the Niagara peninsula.

We grow over 100 million pounds of blueberries a year, are the largest raspberry region in the country, and are second in cranberry production nationwide.

Agriculture is the leading employer in much of the Fraser Valley, and because land is in such short supply, our farmers are world leaders and innovators in intensive farming. Developers would have us trade away what is the world’s Silicon Valley of agriculture for low density single family housing that is almost always a net tax drain on a community. Once built, such development creates almost no jobs and requires expensive infrastructure in perpetuity; just look at the billions we are spending to replace decaying roads and bridges built during pre-ALR days.

The second misconception is that liquidating the ALR would lower housing costs in Vancouver. Sadly, the very geography that makes Vancouver wonderful dooms our region to a dense and expensive future. The Canadian portion of the Fraser Valley lowlands has only about 2,500 square kilometres of non-mountainous land in total; compare that to a built area of over 7,000 square kilometres for the Greater Toronto Area and it becomes obvious that even if we pave every park and every farm from the airport to Hope we will, within another 50 years, be in a situation where the only way to build something in Vancouver will be to take something else down.

Most of the GVRD and the FVRD is comprised of commanding mountain ranges, and this won’t change if we pave the 20 per cent of land in Greater Vancouver that is in the ALR. The only real choice we have is whether we live in an expensive city that enjoys fresh foods and green space or an expensive city that is a sea of freeways, tract housing, and pavement.