Editor:

My husband and I were returning from taking our children to school. They are the fifth generation living on our family farm. As we came home, we drove by one of our fields that was used to grow corn all summer.

Today, the field is growing Italian rye grass. As I drove by, I thought “We are growing something.”

It is something that, come spring time, we will feed to our milk cows. They will continue to produce tanker loads of milk which you, the people of the City and Township of Langley will put on your corn flakes in the morning.

The agricultural potential of this area is unlimited. Can we afford to lose any more farmland?

An article I recently read in the Farm Fresh Marketing Guide, which I quote with its permission, sums up everything we are trying to say.

“When checking the products in the Farm Fresh Guide, you might be surprised to learn that farmers in this part of B.C. are able to produce so many different crops and products. There aren’t many places in Canada where the combination of rich soils and mild climate make this possible. You can easily look at the substantial number of parcels of agricultural land and conclude that development of this land for other purposes might be alright.

“But maybe we need to think about more than that. Predictably, you will find vacant agricultural land around any expanding urban centre such as Vancouver, because the rising value of land makes it financially more prudent in the eyes of some landowners to let the land remain idle until an opportunity to convert to a non-agricultural use presents itself. Generally, non-agricultural uses return more money to the landowner than agriculture.”

“What is likely to be the situation within 10 to 20 years? It is likely that rising energy costs will profoundly impact our economies and the structure of our society. There may be significant premiums on the cost of importing food from great distances, creating financial advantages for local food producers. Availability of imported food, which we presently take for granted, may decline. Imported vegetables we now obtain from California may become unavailable or prohibitively expensive. If we continue to chip away at the Fraser Valley’s ALR base, we are choosing short-term growth over smart growth.”

Admittedly, the above comments involve predictions. No one can be sure if these will come true.

What we can all be sure of is that once we alienate ALR land from the uniquely productive arable land of the Fraser Valley, its potential for local food production will be gone forever. Although we have already lost a lot of agricultural land, we can take steps now to protect every parcel that still remains.

Nicole Davis,

Davistead Farms,

Langley