Editor, The News:

Regarding Maple Ridge’s agricultural plan.

According to a majority of councillors, the recently presented agricultural plan was rejected because is too full of “vision” and short on “economic viability.”

And here I thought vision was a good thing. If you start something new and exciting, don’t you usually start with a vision?

If past Maple Ridge councils had more vision, maybe our district would not be a hodgepodge place with sprawling subdivisions, a decaying, soulless town centre that looks towards a gambling palace for its survival, and congested roads and inadequate public transportation.

In contrast, the agricultural advisory committee has a strong vision.

Coun. Mike Morden wants proof and an economic accounting that agriculture is economically viable.

Is a far-flung new subdivision in Thornhill economically viable for our town? Who is going to finance the new infrastructure and future upkeep? So far, I have not seen any kind of financial accounting and the cost to taxpayers!

Where do our councillors think food comes from? From Safeway and Save-0n? We have been fortunate so far that we have been able to import most of our food at a cheap price.

When you can buy New Zealand apples for $0.79 a pound, why grow our own? We have the cheapest food prices and the cheapest gas prices in the world. That is going to change: with the supply of oil declining and dirty tar sands oil getting more expensive and demand for oil in China and India increasing, transportation costs and agricultural costs will drive up food prices.

Add to that crop failures due to droughts, floods, fires, desertification, pests and viruses in many of the food-producing countries like Australia, Mexico and the U.S. and you have a recipe for added costs to food and food security.

B.C. has a minimal amount of good farmland and we are paving it over.

We run highways through organic farms, poison our waters with pesticides and deplete our aquifers. It is shameful the disregard some of our councillors hold for the most precious resource: food-producing land.

And don’t tell me the soil here is not able to produce anything, Coun. Al Hogarth! Please look up the word, cultivate!

If you can grow 200 varieties of potatoes in the Peruvian High Andes and make the desert live, you can grow nearly anything here. You can put a stick in the ground here and it will grow.

Agricultural land right now is undervalued.

Yes, it is hard to make a living from agriculture and farm receipts are abysmal.

Many large corporations and countries like China have realized how important agricultural land is going to be and are buying up farmland all over the world.

Coun. Judy Dueck does not think the district should invest in its own farmland?

Would she not want to buy stock at the bottom of the market? If I had any money to invest it would be in agricultural land. I may not see a profit right away but I would be sure my grandchildren have a secure food supply. And is that not what vision is all about?

Maria Raynolds

Maple Ridge