A long-time farmer and Richmond city councillor is predicting a time when B.C. beef is no longer sent to Alberta for processing.

As a case in point, Harold Steves told the Straight that, with his help, his son Jerry’s Cache Creek farm already “direct-markets” much of its beef to Lower Mainland customers.

“I think that anytime that you work on a buy-local campaign or you set up the marketing processes to provide for the 100-mile diet—local agriculture—effectively, it is a threat to globalization,” Steves, chair of Metro Vancouver’s agriculture committee, said by phone from Richmond City Hall. “I don’t usually go around saying that, but it is. And that’s it, and it really changes marketing.”

Steves made these comments shortly before Metro Vancouver was scheduled to unveil a draft regional food system strategy. The 52-page draft plan, which will be presented to the committee on Thursday (September 9), emphasizes the importance of fostering a “sustainable, resilient and healthy food system” in the region. Its 20 strategies include a call for the protection of agricultural land and the reduction of food waste.

“But the main thing in terms of agricultural land is setting an urban-containment boundary,” Steves said.

The draft regional food system strategy makes no mention of peak oil, a term used to describe the point at which global oil production will begin to decline. However, the report does state: “Oil prices are projected to rise significantly in the future and food prices will follow.”

Vancouver peak-oil researcher and architect Richard Balfour, coauthor of Strategic Sustainable Planning: A Civil Defense Manual for Cultural Survival (Old City Foundation Press, 2007), has advocated building housing on hillsides so that valley floors can be freed up for food production. In the past, he has accused planners of taking “baby steps” in addressing peak oil, which he believes will threaten local food supplies.

Maria Harris, the Metro director who represents Electoral Area A, which includes the UBC campus, told the Straight the draft strategy points out that, in Surrey, “it is going to be key to figure out how to preserve farmland there. There will be enormous pressure there, because farmland will become the small portion.”

Chief Kim Baird said the Tsawwassen First Nation owns about 800 hectares within the Agricultural Land Reserve—land it received in 2009 when the Tsawwassen treaty came into effect.

“Speaking as a First Nation, trying to get my members involved in agricultural production, it seems pretty challenging to do so, because it seems to be quite a large economy of scale to make it work,” Baird told the Straight by phone.

The First Nation is honouring the existing leases of farmers, according to Baird, while her members are “scratching their heads wondering how we can break into agriculture”.

Draft Regional Food System Strategy for Metro Vancouver - September 2010