From the SFU Urban Studies program:
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A public talk by Paul Burton, Professor of Urban Management and Planning, Griffith University, Queensland, Australia:
“Making Space for Urban Agriculture”
April 28, 7:00pm, Room 1700
RSVP at: www.sfu.ca/reserve
Australia sees itself as a food secure country, able to help feed a growing global population. However, it continues to build national and local food systems that rely on increasingly complex distribution systems. Extreme weather events and other existential threats to food production and distribution are prompting greater attention to the re-localisation of these systems and planning regimes can help or hinder these process.
In this talk, Professor Burton critically reviews Australian practice and explores what might be learned from Canadian experience of local and metropolitan planning for greater food security.
Does it really make sense to grow blueberries or raspberries in Richmond, Delta or Langley, adjacent to highrises, where residential land is $1M or more per acre when we could also grow them in Merrit or Okanagan on land 1/4 to 1/10th the land value ?
Why protect milk, egg and dairy producers with quotas so farmers get rich and fat at the Canadian dairy consumers’ expense ?
The land policies need some serious revisiting. While I agree with the recent decision to loosen up the ALR in N-BC it did not go far enough in the Okanagan and especially Lower Mainland. We need more parks here and more cheaper land for housing, not more room for blueberries which could go easily be grown elsewhere.
Welll, the parkade rooftop greenhouse operation went bankrupt some time ago:
http://www.theprovince.com/business/Company+behind+rooftop+lettuce+farm+downtown+Vancouver+parkade+goes+bankrupt/9426732/story.html
http://fullcomment.nationalpost.com/2014/01/28/brian-hutchinson-vancouvers-salad-days-die-with-bankrupt-roof-top-garden/
http://www.vancouversun.com/business/Failure+high+tech+rooftop+greenhouse+Vancouver+leaves+million+trail+debt/9436678/story.html
http://www.cbc.ca/news/canada/british-columbia/parking-lot-greenhouse-goes-bankrupt-in-vancouver-1.2510245