The Last Working Farm on This Corner of South Surrey Is Under Threat. Once It's Gone, It's Gone.
Another ALR exclusion application has been filed for land that has been farmed for generations. The developer's arguments are familiar. So are the promises about what will be built instead. The community has heard this story before.
The application is filed under the Agricultural Land Commission's non-farm use and exclusion process. The language is administrative. The stakes are not.
The parcel in question — a working farm in the southeastern corner of South Surrey that has produced vegetables, berries, and greenhouse crops for decades — is the subject of a development application that, if approved, would remove it from the Agricultural Land Reserve and permit residential and commercial development. The applicant's submission argues that the land is not viable agricultural land. The farmer who has worked it for twenty-two years would disagree.
The Agricultural Land Reserve was created in 1973 for exactly this reason. BC's farmland is finite, irreplaceable, and under constant pressure from development interests that see flat, accessible land and calculate its value in units per acre rather than tonnes per hectare. The ALR was the province's commitment that some things would not be traded away for short-term development revenue.
That commitment has been eroding. ALR exclusions have been approved at increasing rates in Surrey and the surrounding region. Each individual application is argued on its specific merits — drainage challenges, soil quality assessments, proximity to existing development. The cumulative effect is the steady diminishment of the farmland that was supposed to be protected.
The people making these applications are not villains. They are making rational economic decisions in a regulatory environment that makes those decisions possible. The problem is the regulatory environment — one that allows the permanent removal of agricultural land for reversible development benefits.
Once this farm is gone, it will not come back. The soil does not regenerate under a parking structure. The decision, if made, will be made forever. That deserves more than an administrative process that most residents do not know is happening.
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