A proposal by Summerland’s Agricultural Advisory Committee calls for a land exchange system to maintain the amount of land within the province’s Agricultural Land Reserve.
The proposal is included in the committee’s written submission to the province as the Ministry of Agriculture’s independent advisory committee considers recommendations for the revitalization of the land reserve.
The land reserve was established in 1973 in order to protect the province’s agricultural land, but since that time, there have been efforts to have land removed from the land reserve.
The Summerland committee’s recommendation calls for an equivalent amount of land to be added to the land reserve if a piece of land is removed.
This solution, if adopted, would ensure the existing size of the land reserve remain constant, at roughly 4.6 million hectares throughout the province.
If a land exchange concept sounds familiar, it is because Summerland has already experienced a proposal of this nature.
In 2014, during the proposed Official Community Plan changes, a land exchange was proposed.
The exchanged called for 80.34 hectares near the core of the community to be removed from the land reserve and replaced with 91.7 hectares in the Prairie Valley area.
Opponents of this exchange said the land to be added to the reserve was of a much lower quality than the land being removed.
If land exchanges are to be implemented at the provincial level, measures must be taken to ensure the good agricultural land is not replaced with lower quality farm land.
The Agricultural Land Reserve’s purpose, to protect the province’s farm land, is important today, just as it was in the early 1970s when the land reserve was created.
However, changes to agriculture over the years mean changes may be needed in order to continue to protect our province’s agricultural land.