Metro Vancouver’s Regional Food System Strategy includes urban agriculture

Goal 1: Increased Capacity to Produce Food Close to Home

Draft report released
September 2010

Excerpts:

Strategy 1.5 Encourage urban agriculture

In addition to rural agriculture, there are opportunities to increase food production on private and public lands in urbanized areas. Community gardens and urban farms are using public lands to cultivate food while some enterprising individuals are farming networks of private gardens. The yields of these projects are either sold or used personally. Some community groups are using urban gardens as a means to teach disadvantaged groups how to produce and eat healthy foods. Urban agriculture also provides community and ecological benefits; it contributes to the development of a sense of place, provides colour and softens the concrete landscape of urban neighborhoods and contributes to the ecological health of the region.

Examples of current actions:

Kwantlen Polytechnic University has developed a training program that provides practical knowledge, Farm skills, apprenticeship and land leasing opportunities for new farmers through their new Farm School in Richmond.

The Fraser Valley Direct Marketing Association has developed a Former Farmer to Farmer mentorship program.

BC Agriculture Council established BC Young Farmers in 2008 to provide a Forum for young farmers to interact, address issues of concern, learn from one another and gain experience in association governance and the collective decision-making process.

Goal 1 Proposed Actions:

Create a Regional Farmland Trust that could be used to purchase farmland for sale, in or out of the ALR, to lease to farmers, especially young ones, who cannot afford the purchase price. The Trust could be arranged by the pooling of private and public resources.

Develop land use inventories of public lands, including parks, boulevards, right-of-ways, and rooftops that could be used for urban agriculture and follow with an assessment of how to balance agricultural and conservational values. In the case of parks, recreational values will also need to be considered.

See the complete report here. Updated to February, 2011

Agriculture in Metro Vancouver.