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the challenges facing prairie cities like
Calgary and Edmonton.
All along the Highway 2 corridor
from Edmonton to Calgary, land is
being bought for speculation and
development. It is driving land prices
higher, and gradually converting
agricultural land to other uses.
According to Farm Credit Canada
(FCC), agricultural land values have
increased every year since 1992. The
price of agricultural land across Alberta
was up by 12.9 per cent last year.
Nationally, the average increase was 22.1
per cent—the highest since FCC started
tracking in 1985.
“The main drivers for land values are
location and supply and demand. If
there’s a sector that’s not active, prices
won’t go up,” explained Kenneth
Gurney, senior appraiser for FCC in
Alberta. “In the Highway 2 corridor, oil
and gas is strong, the urban influence is
strong and agriculture is strong, so the
values keep going up.”
Over the last couple of years, good
crops and high prices have helped keep
agriculture competitive for land use, but
the pressure keeps building for land on
the urban fringe.
“You can’t argue that agricultural land
is not being swallowed by urbanization,
particularly along the Highway 2 corridor
and the edge of major centres,” said
Jason Cathcart, land-use policy manager
with Alberta Agriculture and Rural
Development.
From 1996 to 2009, approximately
200,000 acres were permanently lost
by agriculture, said Cathcart, 90 per
cent of which was between Edmonton
and Calgary. Ninety-five per cent of
that development is on Class 2 and 3
soils, some of Alberta’s most productive
cropland. Cathcart estimated that
roughly an equal amount of land has
been temporarily lost to industrial uses,
but could eventually be reclaimed and
brought back into production.
Getting hard numbers is difficult
because the data is incomplete.
The provincial government tracked
the loss of agricultural land from the
1970s until 1995, when the Municipal
Government Act granted autonomy to
municipalities to make decisions about
land use. The provincial land use plan
that accompanies the Act provides
high-level direction to municipalities
with recommendations to identify their
agricultural lands
and zone them
accordingly; limit
fragmentation and
conversion; direct
development away
from agricultural
lands; and limit
conflicts between
intensive agriculture
and non-agricultural
uses.
“There has been no
provincial oversight,
monitoring or
knowledge as to how well municipalities
have been doing since 1995,” said
Cathcart. “Then, during the last boom
cycle in the mid-2000s, the province
started to hear the public asking what we
were doing for public planning for land in
the province. Up until then, the province
took private property interests to the
extreme.”
Without a coherent, legislated
agriculture policy, urban municipalities
are left to navigate through networks of
regional planning boards, inter-municipal
development plans and other tools to try
to fill the void. As the City of Edmonton
continues to grow, two major principles
guide their efforts.
“We are working to reduce our
footprint and be efficient in the use of
infrastructure dollars and infrastructure,”
said Tim Brockelsby, senior planner in
urban planning and environment for the
City of Edmonton. “In the big scheme,
to have those principles applied
preserves agricultural land by being
more efficient.
“As planners, we need to look ahead,
but there’s a general acceptance that
there will be growth,” he added. “With
the annexation or within the existing city
boundaries, ultimately it comes down to
the land owner making a choice around
this issue.”
Janelle Hebert could not disagree
more. She returned to her family’s farm,
Riverbend Gardens, with her husband
in 2006 to grow vegetables for the
local market and
raise a family. The
land was part of an
area annexed into
the City of Edmonton
in 1981. A couple
of years after they
arrived, an area
structural plan (ASP)
was presented to the
city council to begin
development in the
area.
“I think the spin of
leaving agricultural
land in the farmers’ hands is the wrong
one,” said Hebert, after six years of
negotiating with the council and
developers. “It’s not up to me. You can’t
leave it in the hands of the people who
are struggling to make it because it
makes it so easy to walk away.”
Hebert and other farmers worked
with the City to have the land
designated for agriculture, but when
the province asked to have a provincial
highway included in the ASP, the
developers ran it through the middle of
the farmland. The farmers say the City
could save their farms by redirecting the
highway, but the developers don’t want
it on their land, either.
“Some of the farmers want to cash
out and have been waiting for it for
30 years. Some of us who have really
viable businesses are hanging on and
saying, ‘let’s make agriculture part
of development,’” she said. “If I cash
out, I take this away from the future
generations. It’s a one-time payout and
it’s over. This kind of development and
politics is really shortsighted. The value
of agricultural land is priceless in the
long term.”
The Food Issue
2014
grainswest.com
29
“In the Highway 2
corridor, oil and gas
is strong, the urban
influence is strong and
agriculture is strong,
so the values keep
going up.”
–Kenneth Gurney