Food Security and Supply Problems Lead to ALR Changes

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The BC government is changing the ALR Use Regulations to allow farmers to build intensive greenhouses and vertical farms.

It’s a major change to the legislation, and a controversial one, as critics say those greenhouses will be built on some of the province’s best arable land, when they could be built in industrial parks.

But Lana Popham, the Minister of Agriculture, Food and Fisheries, says the move will increase BC’s food security and improve the overall farm economy.

“Making B.C.’s food system more sustainable and resilient helps build a stronger economy and prosperous farming communities,” Popham says, describing the situation as urgent for the province.

“When the pandemic and recent climate change-related floods disrupted supply chains, British Columbians were reminded of the incredible bounty in our own back yard,” she said. “Opening opportunities for more vertical farms and innovative agritech practices in partnership with existing traditional farms helps solve our overall food security and food economy puzzle.”

Opposition agriculture critic Ian Paton, the MLA for Delta South, does not agree with the idea of building greenhouses on ALR land that can be used for traditional farming.

“God knows they’ve covered up enough prime farmland in Delta with greenhouses, which is almost the same as vertical farming,” Paton argues. “Instead of growing lettuce, they’re growing cucumbers, tomatoes and peppers, but it’s all, basically, on a concrete floor.”

As well, Paton points out that high intensity greenhouses and vertical farms are very expensive to build, and require a massive capital outlay.

“It’s cost-prohibitive,” he says. “There’s only 12 vertical farms in all of Canada, and why is that? This is something that people with suits and ties get into from downtown Vancouver, not conventional farmers.”

That said, there’s no question that intensive agritech operations can massively boost food production, particularly in colder regions where crops can’t be grown in the winter. It’s also ideal for areas with very little arable land.

A good example of that can be seen in The Netherlands. Despite its small size, The Netherlands is the second largest food exporter in the world, after the United States. And yet, the entire country is only twice the size of the Okanagan Valley, and slightly larger than Vancouver Island.

At only 41,543 square kilometres, the densely populated nation still manages to far outstrip Canada in food exports, despite Canada being 240 times larger.

In BC, however, the amount of farm land is constrained by the extremely mountainous terrain and cold winters in most of the province. For areas like BC, The Netherlands does provide a model to increase food production and particularly export crops.

In 2019 The Netherlands’ agriculture exports rose another 8% to 9.9 billion Euros, the equivalent as of this writing of $13.9 billion Cdn., and close to $130 billion in economic activity in the Dutch economy.

The Netherlands has succeeded by investing massively in Research and Development projects, and converting many types of food production to high intensity greenhouses, vertical farms, or livestock buildings. For example, one high-tech building holds 150,000 chickens at one time in a vertical indoor farm, and in ways that are kinder to the animals than most production farms.

A rotary milking machine at the University of Wageningen - arguably the top agricultural institute in the world - enables a single operator to milk 150 cows an hour in a very small space; a critical component in a country with little free land.

The innovation in The Netherlands can be seen clearly when you compare tomato production per kilometre. A recent report by National Geographic showed that The Netherlands produces a staggering 144,352 tons of tomatoes per square mile. That compares to China, the largest producer of tomatoes in the world, producing only 3,868 tons per square mile.

The Netherlands also uses a lot less water, at 1.1 gallons per pound, as opposed to 25.6 gallons per pound as the global average, and 34 gallons for China.

That doesn’t necessarily mean the Dutch are busy ripping up farmland to build up their intensive agricultural facilities. Greenhouses are built in industrial zones as well, and some are even built on top of factories, using space that would otherwise be wasted.

That’s a trend we’re seeing around he world, and particularly in eastern Canada, where the world’s largest rooftop greenhouse opened in Montreal in 2020.

In fact, eastern Canada in particular is one of the leaders in the move toward environmentally sustainable greenhouse growing.

According to the latest Stats Canada report in 2019, Ontario had the vast majority of greenhouse vegetable facilities, with 10 million square meters of greenhouses out of the Canadian total of 14.6 million square meters, totaling 71 per cent of all vegetable greenhouses. As a result, Ontario is one of the largest exporters of food products of any jurisdiction in North America, despite its cold temperatures and relatively small amount of arable land.

Notably, BC places second in that list with 2.9 million square meters, or about 17% of the Canadian total.

Those two provinces also lead the country when it comes to exports. In 2015 Ontario exported $654.2 million worth of greenhouse crops in 2015, growing to $920.2 million in 2019.

The BC government has been trying to grow the agricultural sector, and it’s becoming clear that in a province with a constricted land base, that goal can only be met through radical change. Ravi Kahlon, BC’s Minister of Jobs, Economic Recovery and Innovation, says the key is to find ways to simultaneously improve food security, increase exports and revenues, and to do so while also reducing greenhouse gas emissions and pollution.

“A key pillar of our StrongerBC Economic Plan is centred around fostering innovation to grow the economy, while tackling climate change,” said Ravi Kahlon, Minister of Jobs, Economic Recovery and Innovation. “By opening up new opportunities for agritech companies to operate in B.C., we are positioning our province to be a world leader in finding innovative solutions to food security problems.”

The reason that’s so difficult, but also so important, is that agriculture and forestry is the second largest source of greenhouse gas emissions in the world. According to the United Nations’ Food and Agriculture Organization, Energy Generation tops the chart with 35% of greenhouse gas emissions, but Agriculture, Forestry and Other Land Uses comes close behind with 24%, ahead of industry at 21%.

To put that into even starker perspective, if you banned all of the cars, trucks, trains, boats and aircraft in the world together, that would only cut greenhouse gas emissions by 14%.

Those GHGs are a particularly big problem because increases in food productivity required farmers to increase their use of fertilizers like nitrogen, which unfortunately releases nitrous oxide, a gas that is 300 times worse for global warming than CO2. Finding ways to grow more food with fewer damaging inputs isn’t just about economics; it’s a key part of preventing global warming from devastating our entire civilization and our planet.

Right now, the major criticism of the BC government’s new policy is that it will involve greenhouses being built on Agricultural Land Reserve, which represents the best of the province’s arable land. As the policy rolls out, some details to look for will be whether greenhouses might be restricted to lands that are considered ‘marginal’, or better yet, incentives for BC farmers and Agritech companies to build them on industrial lands instead, including on the roofs of factories and warehouses. 

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