Farmland is being bought up by offshore speculators and it's harming Richmond’s ability to produce safe, local food, vital to the region’s food security, says Dave Semple, an independent city council candidate and former parks manager for the City of Richmond.
"We have a bunch of absentee owners who are sitting on the land hoping to make a killing when it goes up for sale to developers,” said Semple in a news release.
He said the city needs to improve communication with farmland owners and foster connections between them and farmers who can work the land.
He is suggesting that owners who don’t farm land in the Agricultural Land Reserve “pay bigger fees.”
He said he is “adamant” that no provincial or federal agency ought not to be able to buy farmland for industrial purposes, something he purports Port Metro Vancouver has done recently.
He noted growing food locally is an important buffer to the growing drought problems of California, where most of B.C.’s produce comes from.
“What we need to do is try and get these farms back online,” said Semple.
Semple’s platform is decidedly “green” as he wants to preserve and improve the city’s park system and help manage the Fraser River properly with other authorities.
“Whatever we do we need to ensure the safety of the river, the safety of fish, the safety of the farmlands,” said Semple, who is proposing a jet fuel pipeline be built from Riverport along Highway 99, on provincial land, should it be built at all.
“The province would be responsible if there’s a spill,” said Semple, who thinks a terminal near the airport would have made more sense.
Semple is also a big advocate of “short sea shipping,” whereby goods are moved up and down the river by barge. This would mean the river needn’t be dredged so deep, which can cause geomorphic changes in the river, potentially ruining farm water sources as more salt can rush upstream.
“You have to protect farmland from salt so it doesn’t kill it,” said Semple.
Semple noted his work on off-leash dog parks, saying the city “has a nice array” of them (although it actually lagging behind municipalities like Surrey and Vancouver both in numbers and area per capita).
Semple is also an advocate of maintaining the city's dyke and pump system.
