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Tough new rules that eliminate non-farmer ownership of land in the Agricultural Land Reserve will be needed to bring idle land into production, according to Kent Mullinix, director of the Institute for Sustainable Food Systems at Kwantlen Polytechnic University.

Thousands of homes have been built on land reserved for farming, due to a “colossal policy failure over decades,” he said.

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But stopping the erosion of farmland being populated with “monster homes” ranging up to 23,000 square feet is not going to be easy.

About 75 per cent of smaller lots — in the range of two hectares (five acres) — in the ALR are not farmed, according to the Metro Vancouver Agricultural Land Use Inventory. Only half of ALR land in the region is actively farmed, roughly 34,147 hectares (85,000 acres).

Agriculture Minister Lana Popham plans to announce a far-reaching revitalization of the rules that govern the ALR and activating small parcels is on her to-do list.