Save Our Southlands

From a report commissioned by the B.C. Ministry of Agriculture, Food and Fisheries entitled "Differing Perspectives on Farmland":

Speculating on Land Use Change

The rise in land prices, whether it is the result of proximity to urban areas, an intrusion of rural estates or absentee land ownership anticipating an eventual land use change, all tend to weaken the often highly specialized, heavily capitalized and fragile agricultural economy and the family farm ownership structure.

This may set in motion shifts to different types of farming, possibly harming the stability of an area’s traditional agricultural community and support services. The increased farming of land leased, particularly on a short term basis, rather than owned can have a number of direct negative effects, including a reluctance to undertake necessary soil management practices.

This was a key finding of the Delta Agricultural Study-a municipality in which two thirds of the land farmed is leased or rented. Besides stewardship implications, what emerges is a psychology of uncertainty that has the potential to permeate the entire farm community.

The Impermanence Syndrome

Often land is simply left idle and in a derelict condition giving the appearance of agriculture’s demise, promoting a community attitude that anticipates the eventual end of agriculture.

This important dynamic has been referred to as the "impermanence syndrome" and is characterized by the sale of land for hobby farm and rural estate residential use, disinvestment in farming and shifting agricultural use resulting in an under-utilization of farmland.

It has been estimated that for every hectare of farmland urbanized, another hectare is left idle.

This is a phenomenon particularly prevalent, but not restricted to, the urban fringe and contributes still further to the destabilizing of the agricultural community.

Some farmers may, as a result of forces pushing up land prices, become paper millionaires. Some will find that they have an increase in their mortgagable value to allow borrowing to afford high-cost machinery, and for others, the enticement of increasing land prices will simply provide the impetus to abandon the farm altogether.

For non-established farmers, the land price problem can be particularly harsh, precluding them from full participation in agriculture because the price of farmland has been driven too high relative to its agriculturally productive value.

Read more of the report here.