{"id":53652,"date":"2020-06-13T17:07:14","date_gmt":"2020-06-13T22:07:14","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/olduvai.ca\/?p=53652"},"modified":"2020-06-13T17:07:18","modified_gmt":"2020-06-13T22:07:18","slug":"the-argument-over-where-to-put-agri-tech-zones","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/olduvai.ca\/?p=53652","title":{"rendered":"The Argument over Where to Put \u2018Agri-Tech\u2019 Zones"},"content":{"rendered":"\n<h3 class=\"wp-block-heading\"><a href=\"https:\/\/thetyee.ca\/News\/2020\/06\/12\/Argument-Agri-Tech-Zones\/\">The Argument over Where to Put \u2018Agri-Tech\u2019 Zones<\/a><\/h3>\n\n\n\n<p><strong>In the name of food security, BC proposes whittling away Agricultural Land Reserve farmland. Opposition is sprouting.<\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n<figure class=\"wp-block-image\"><img decoding=\"async\" src=\"https:\/\/thetyee.ca\/News\/2020\/06\/12\/JenniferDysonWaterBuffaloes.jpg\" alt=\"JenniferDysonWaterBuffaloes.jpg\"\/><figcaption>\u2018What are the bottlenecks for agri-tech or ag-industrial? What is agri-tech and ag-industrial? I think we need to define it,\u2019 says Agricultural Land Commission chair Jennifer Dyson. She and husband Russell pose with water buffaloes at their farm in Port Alberni.&nbsp;Photo: supplied.<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n\n\n\n<p>The province is working to carve out new industrial zones for agricultural technology, saying the goal is better food security. But farmers, land-use experts and former NDP ministers are all raising concerns over the proposed location \u2014 on the arable soil of the Agricultural Land Reserve.<a href=\"https:\/\/thetyee.ca\/News\/2020\/06\/12\/Argument-Agri-Tech-Zones\/#series-listview-link\"><\/a><\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>Last month, deputy minister of agriculture Wes Shoemaker was appointed head of a new effort to establish agri-industrial zones, \u201cas recommended by\u201d the BC NDP government\u2019s Food Security Task Force, said an internal email obtained by The Tyee.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>The recommendation, one of four in a new&nbsp;<a href=\"https:\/\/engage.gov.bc.ca\/app\/uploads\/sites\/121\/2020\/01\/FSTF-Report-2020-The-Future-of-Food.pdf\">report<\/a>&nbsp;titled \u201cThe Future of B.C.\u2019s Food System,\u201d is to convert up to 0.25 per cent of the Agricultural Land Reserve into agri-industrial zones.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>Population growth and climate change may make agri-tech \u2014 which supports the production, processing and distribution of food \u2014 increasingly necessary. But proponents of the ALR warn about eliminating soil-based food production on 11,500 hectares of land. That\u2019s the size of Vancouver.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>The ALR was established in 1973 to protect B.C. farmland from overdevelopment. At a time when the province was losing as much as 6,000 hectares of land every year to urban sprawl, the NDP government under Dave Barrett placed the five per cent \u2014 or 4.7 million hectares \u2014 of the province that\u2019s farmable into a reserve based on a soil-climate classification.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>\u2026click on the above link to read the rest of the article\u2026<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>The Argument over Where to Put \u2018Agri-Tech\u2019 Zones In the name of food security, BC proposes whittling away Agricultural Land Reserve farmland. Opposition is sprouting. The province is working to carve out new industrial zones for agricultural technology, saying the goal is better food security. But farmers, land-use experts and former NDP ministers are all [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_monsterinsights_skip_tracking":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_active":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_note":"","_monsterinsights_sitenote_category":0,"footnotes":""},"categories":[4],"tags":[29875,65,94,1912,29876,5499],"class_list":["post-53652","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-environment","tag-agri-tech-zones","tag-bc","tag-british-columbia","tag-food-production","tag-serena-renner","tag-the-tyee"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/olduvai.ca\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/53652","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/olduvai.ca\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/olduvai.ca\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/olduvai.ca\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/olduvai.ca\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=53652"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/olduvai.ca\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/53652\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":53653,"href":"https:\/\/olduvai.ca\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/53652\/revisions\/53653"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/olduvai.ca\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=53652"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/olduvai.ca\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=53652"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/olduvai.ca\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=53652"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}