[BCFSN] Attack on the ALR

[Arzeena Hamir]

I know we’re all holding the weight of COVID and the events in the US and our own cities in Canada on our shoulders but here’s the recent development from the BC NDP, via Country Life in BC:

Wes Shoemaker has been appointed to lead the development of an agri-industrial zone within the Agricultural Land Reserve, and role that positions him to become "Commissioner for Agri-Industrial Lands,” as recommended by the province’s Food Security Task Force earlier this year. The commissioner would oversee designation of 28,500 acres within the ALR for the new zone and be responsible for attracting companies to locate within the proposed zone. However, the Agricultural Land Commission and others are pushing back against the move, with ALC chair Jennifer Dyson saying, the commission "would like to be consulted before any decision is made about potentially increasing the impact of processing and retail facilities on the agricultural land base.” Lana Popham says the new zone would be minimal: “We’re just looking for ways to find a place for that to happen It’s not necessarily on the Agricultural Land Reserve … it’s [not] going to take away from the parts of agriculture that we believe in so much.

If you believe the last statement, I have a few bridges for sale…

Contact your MLAs. This" Agri-Industrial Lands” designation goes against the very findings of the ALR/ALC Revitalizations Committee. The ALR is for farming first and we certainly should not be sacrificing valuable land in the Fraser Valley for industrial processing.

Arzeena

Amara Farm
Courtenay, BC
(250) 702-5657
https://www.facebook.com/AmaraFarm
https://twitter.com/arzeena




-------------- next part --------------
An HTML attachment was scrubbed...
URL: <http://bcfsn.org/pipermail/food_bcfsn.org/attachments/20200601/4f381fb3/attachment.html>