The provincial government is hoping to free up land in northern and eastern B.C. that is currently locked in the Agricultural Land Reserve to encourage economic development, according to Energy Minister Bill Bennett, the minister responsible for B.C.’s core service review.

Bennett wants to ensure that marginal agricultural land within the Agricultural Land Reserve in the Kootenays, Cariboo and the northeast is used for the broader benefit of local economies.

“That’s what people in those areas tell us they want,” he said.

Bennett suggested the Agricultural Land Commission, the independent Crown agency charged with protecting 4.7 million hectares of land in the ALR for farming, has been too rigid in its pursuit of that mandate, something that could change as part of the government’s service review.

“When the reserve was created several decades ago, there was much land put in that wasn’t good for agriculture,” said Bennett. “We were promised a review of the boundaries after five years, and that never happened.”

The province’s best agricultural land is concentrated in Richmond, South Vancouver Island, the Fraser Valley and the Okanagan, said Bennett.

“When you get outside those areas into places like the Kootenays, the Cariboo and the northeast, you’ll find a fair bit of land that really isn’t good for agriculture,” he said.

About one-third of the ALR land in the Kootenays — approximately 140,00 hectares — is Class 5, 6 or 7, the lowest-quality soils for agriculture, according to government data.

Critics worry the B.C. Liberals intend to weaken the commission’s mandate in order to facilitate economic expansion and real estate development, the very forces the ALR was created to defend against.

The commission considers 600 to 1,000 applications a year for exclusion from the land reserve.

“That’s our farming and food security gone, right there,” said Brent Mansfield, co-chair of the B.C. Food Systems Network. “If you change its farmland protection mandate and take away its provincial focus and its independence, you make the Agricultural Land Commission powerless and ineffective.”

In a letter to Bennett and Agriculture Minister Pat Pimm, Mansfield and co-chair Abra Brynne worry that the government is sacrificing B.C.’s future food security for short-term economic gain.

“As B.C. considers the current opportunities in the energy sector, resource development must be balanced with the long-term food production capacity of the province so crucial to our food security,” they wrote.

But farmers have been lobbying for change to the legislation that governs the land commission, arguing that it is too restrictive and stifles business growth — activities such as on-farm processing and agri-tourism — in what is an increasingly diverse food industry, according to Rhonda Driediger, chairwoman of the B.C. Agriculture Council.

“There is definitely land throughout B.C. that is in the wrong classification, some of which can be used for non-soiled-based agriculture such as greenhouses and poultry operations,” she said. “We should be looking at the best economic use of land.”

Driediger is unconcerned about a rumoured government agenda to hand control of agricultural land to the oil and gas industry.