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The loss of agricultural land is an
increasingly common story in Canada
and around the world. Over half the
world’s population lives in cities, but all
of those people still need to eat. Lenore
Newman, PhD, is the Canada Research
Chair in food security and environment
at the University of
the Fraser Valley in
Chilliwack, B.C.
“We are entering a
period of food crisis
around the world,
and Canada is one of
the few places that
still has underutilized
farmland,” Newman
explained. “That
means we haven’t
had the conversation
about whether or not
we should be losing
farmland.”
Newman pointed to California to
illustrate her point.
“California is in crisis. Ninety per cent
of the state is in severe drought, and
70 per cent is extreme. In Canada, we
import $1.8 billion of California produce
every year, and this summer it’s going to
run out,” she said.
California doesn’t just dominate
the produce section at the grocery
t is four kilometres from
David and Barb Wedman’s farm
to the south edge of the City
of Edmonton’s corporate limit. When
the family homestead was first settled
in 1892, the city was a full day’s travel
away. Five generations later, irritated
commuters crowd the Wedmans’ farm
equipment on the roads as they rush
to town.
“We know the urban sprawl is coming
eventually because we’re close to the
city, but my land is not for sale until I am
ready to sell it,” said David Wedman.
The Wedman farm is part of the
38,500 acres that the City of Edmonton is
proposing to annex from Leduc County.
If the annexation is successful, the city will
have enough space for another 50 years
of urban growth. It will push gradually
out into residential and commercial
development, scraping some of the best
crop-producing topsoil in Canada off the
land as it goes.
“Where they want to do this urban
sprawl is the majority of the good land.
Let’s sprawl to where the farmers struggle
to make a living,” said Barb Wedman.
“We are not so steadfast that we don’t
appreciate what we have around us, but
in Alberta we don’t have a protected land
base. Nobody ever thought we’d need
to protect this black soil.”
store, it’s also a cautionary tale about
what happens when urban sprawl
goes unchecked. In the early days
of Los Angeles, farms and orange
orchards surrounded the city. Today,
agriculture has been erased from the
landscape—13,000 square kilometres of
fertile land subsumed
by urban growth.
Across North
America, cities
are trying different
models to safeguard
the surrounding
agricultural lands
with varied results.
Toronto has the
“green belt,” Portland
has set an urban
growth boundary,
and Vancouver is
limited by B.C.’s
Agricultural Land
Commission, which restricts residential
and commercial development on
agricultural land.
“When you are located on a plain,
it takes incredible fortitude to form a
ring around a city and say, ‘no more.’
In the U.S., a lot of cities on the plains
have a ring road and outer ring road
because it is so easy to keep jumping
the boundary,” said Newman about
The Food Issue
2014
grainswest.com
27
“Where they want to
do this urban sprawl
is the majority of the
good land. Let’s sprawl
to where the farmers
struggle to make a
living.”
–Barb Wedman
I
Rural Alberta’s fight against urban sprawl
by TAMARA LEIGH • ILLUSTRATIONs by MIKE BYERS