Sometimes the email flow has its own surprising juxtapositions.
Yesterday at 1:22 pm I got an item in the inbox labelled “Idle Farmers?” – with this link to a piece by Jeff Nagel in the Surrey Leader:
Agricultural land that sits idle and grows nothing may seem a waste, but regional politicians say there’s only so much they can do to fix the challenges of farming in a high-priced urban area.
Metro Vancouver has spent money championing a steady stream of regional initiatives to increase the amount of actively farmed land and bolster food security (and on a) survey of ALR land owners conducted for Metro by Ipsos Reid at a cost of $15,000.
It found 28 per cent of the ALR in Richmond, Delta, Surrey, Langley and Barnston Island isn’t being farmed but could be.
The survey found little interest among the land owners who weren’t farming to get productive.
Some like having undeveloped forest wrapping their home in nature, like a personal park, others saw it as an investment.
One Delta owner was keeping the land until it could be taken out of the ALR and industrialized.
Donna Passmore, of the Farmland Defence League, added her comment: “The land is not owned by idle farmers (isn’t that expression an oxymoron?). The land is idle because it is owned by land speculators who have absolutely no desire to farm it.”
Then, a few hours later, the newsletter from Clark Wilson, one of the primo business law firms in the city, arrived with a recap of the 2013 Vancouver Real Estate Forum, held on April 9 and summarized in their BCRELink newsletter. Quite a different world view. And quite a good newsletter. (You can access the whole summary at bcrelinks.com.)
The panel that intrigued me was “Drivers of the Industrial Market: What Do the Key Players See Over the Horizon?”
Here are some of relevant quotes:
More than once the panelists repeated the refrain that there is “no new land” in Vancouver. This of course leads to pressure on pricing …
In terms of drivers of the market, Ron Emerson clearly sees the future and demand of the market being logistics-type space. … Tenants now need large space, proximity to rail, highway and port. Mr. Emerson said that for industrial developers, the ALR is the elephant in the room and he does not think Vancouver can grow without changes to, and lands being removed from, the ALR.
Paul Tilbury agreed that the ALR is a beast that developers will continue to fight, but he doesn’t think it’s a battle that will ever be won.
Let’s face it: prescient developers (or the ones who think they are) are betting that some significant pieces of the ALR will be removed – notably near Delta Port – and that may result in a rethink of the whole reserve. Others, like Tilbury, don’t think that will happen. Passmore and others across the political spectrum are ready for battle.
That would be a fight, certainly, but not just for land and growth. It would be a fight for our soul.
I saw one great suggestion by a friend over the issue of idle farm land: Increase the mil rate on idle ALR land. If your land is in the ALR and zoned for farming, and you’re not using it for such, up go your property taxes. Significantly.
The irony is certainly obvious, and you’re point that the ALR is the most important urban land use decision that’s ever been made in BC is a good one. I recall I made that point at a land use seminar at the U. of Washington Law School about 15 years ago. The Portlanders (Oregon) present were championing their urban service boundary. Of course, there are some residents of the ALR that just want to homestead some land and we couldn’t pay them enough to actually farm it, and close control of sewer construction helps along density as well.