How the future of the ALR becomes an election issue

The BC Conservatives will take a position on the NDP government’s controversial proposal to use more protected farmland for food processing — but not yet.

“We will have some of that information in the next few days,” said BC Conservative Leader Lorne Doerkson Friday, “but we are trying to strengthen our support for different industries in the province, and certainly agriculture will be another one of them.”

Premier David Eby sent the province to an early election just days after the public consultation period on changes to the rules of the agricultural land reserve closed, putting the proposal on hold.

While business interests including the Vancouver board and the BC food and beverage industry group had in recent years for more food processing in the ALR lobby, the submission of the Agricultural Land Commission and others for the commitment used strong language to criticize the proposal.

“The proposal raises serious concerns regarding the long-term protection of the agricultural land base, the viability of agriculture, the affordability of agricultural land, and the continued ability of the ALR to fulfill its statutory purposes,” ALC President Jennifer Dyson wrote in a 17-page submission. The ALC exists to preserve agricultural land and encourage agriculture.

“In the Commission’s view, the proposal represents a significant policy change that was not supported by evidence demonstrating the need for change or showing that the proposed change would increase agricultural production, improve farm productivity or improve food security in British Columbia.”

Dyson went through the proposal in detail, using “alarmed” in three places to describe the ALC’s assessment of it and calling it “one of the most significant policy changes” to affect the ALR in decades.

“A central concern for the commission is that the proposal appears to be designed primarily around the needs of industrial food processors rather than the needs of agriculture,” she wrote.

Currently, food processing is allowed on farms anywhere in the ALR as long as 50 percent of what is processed is grown or raised on that farm or on farms with which it is associated. Current rules do not link processing requirements to soil quality, which is graded from a high of one to a low of seven.

The proposed changes, outlined in a four-page discussion paper, would change the rules on food processing on class 5 to 7 country.

Under new rules, the minimum amount of local products that must be processed in a new facility on those lands will be reduced to five percent. This local percentage could be grown or raised anywhere in the province, not just on the farm that hosts the facility, and the rest could come from anywhere in the world.

Processing would also be allowed on Class 4 land if that land is already serviced — meaning it has road access, electricity, municipal water and sewage — at the time the rule is implemented.

BC Food and Beverage, an industry association representing food and beverage processors and manufacturers in the province, advocated for the change.

“In recent years, we have lost some processors to other provinces and the United States due to the high costs of the industrial country,” the industry magazine Food in Canada quoted the CEO of the association James Donaldson said in August. “This change won’t bring them back, but could attract new businesses to come here, and more importantly, it creates opportunities for BC processors to grow and expand here without the need to relocate to do so, which is a win for agriculture and the economy.”

Donaldson said that industrial land in BC is 10 times more expensive than it is in other parts of Canada and that the proposed changes to the ALR will give processors access to significantly cheaper land.

When the provincial government launched the consultation, Business Examiner quoted Bridgitte Anderson, the CEO of the Greater Vancouver Board of Trade, as saying the proposal was a reasonable compromise. “It will open up investment, and increase food security.”

And Alex Mitchell, the CEO of the Abbotsford Chamber of Commerce, requested the change. “There has to be some form of modernization and a recognition that food processing goes together with agriculture, and enabling food processing in our region is pretty key to food security and our overall economic competitiveness.”

Responses to the proposal from the ALC and other farming groups only became available in mid-September, when the consultation period closed.

Katarina Glavas, a senior agrologist at the ALC, said in her submission to the government that she is concerned about the Class 4 and 5 lands in the proposal.

“Limitations in these classes, such as poor drainage, soil moisture deficiency, and soil structure limitations commonly found in the lower mainland, are ameliorated by normal farm practices such as tile drainage, irrigation, subsoil, and soil amendments,” she wrote.

“Class 4 land can and will be class 1 to 3 land once these practices are applied, and in some cases class 5 land can be improved to reach prime status. In some areas of the Okanagan Valley, for example, class 5 land limited by a soil moisture will be classified as class 1 once irrigated, illustrating how dramatically a single capcelability can limit influence on a single improvability.

Soil is a finite and largely nonrenewable resource that takes centuries to form, Glavas said. “Once blasted or developed, [it] is essentially lost to agriculture permanently.”

Dyson pointed out that the ALC has long supported food processing proposals “where a meaningful connection to BC agriculture can be demonstrated” and that existing regulations allow the commission to look at applications on a case-by-case basis.

“The Commission is concerned that the proposal appears to reflect a growing pressure to address industrial land constraints through access to agricultural land,” she said. “In recent decades, significant areas of industrial land have been converted to other uses, including residential and commercial development.”

The BC Agriculture Council, which represents 20,000 farm families and some 30 farm and commodity associations, made a four-page submission saying its board unanimously supports food processing but opposes the proposed rule changes.

“Processing plays an important role in BC’s agricultural economy, but the proposed new rule does not address the structural challenges identified by the processors themselves,” council chair Jennifer Wolke wrote. “These structural challenges are not unique to BC and thus cannot be attributed to the ALR.”

One of the organizations seeking a change to the rules was BC Fresh, a company whose 33 shareholders operate 72 BC farms.

Steve Roosdahl, who has been the CEO of BC Fresh since January 2025, declined to comment this week beyond saying the company supports BCAC’s response to the government’s proposal.

Before the election was called, the NDP government had moved to adopt the proposal. Lana Popham, the NDP’s Minister of Agriculture and Food, is not seeking re-election.

Responding Monday to The Tyee, Eby said the rising prices for basic groceries are a food security issue.

“We need to be more independent on several levels, including food production, to keep the cost of living down for British Columbians, but also to make sure we can stand on our own two feet,” he said, noting the province’s reliance on food from California and a threat that the United States would limit the export of diesel fuel. “Food processing is part of it.”

The proposal would only affect 0.3 percent of the ALR, Eby said.

There are 45,000 square kilometers of land in the ALR, just under five percent of the province.

The BCAC said in its submission that the 21,000 square kilometers that could be affected by the change is “a very significant bottomland” and there were “strong concerns from our membership that the sector would have little to no recourse if the province were to raise this cap at a later date in response to pressure from other competing land interests.”

It is crucial to have a conversation with the agricultural sector about how to properly introduce more food processing, Eby said. “We need to support our farmers, and we also need to do more food processing in the province,” he said. “I think we can do both things and I think in fact we need to do both things for British Columbians.”

Doerkson declined to give the Conservatives’ position on the proposal, but pointed to his party’s support for the beer and wine industry with a temporary removal of the provincial sales tax.

“We will do everything in our power,” he said. “There will be more on that for sure in the coming days on our platform.”

The BC Green Party recently released a policy brief on agriculture and food sovereignty that did not directly address food processing, but for restrictions on non-residents and investment companies owning BC farmland.

“The BC NDP says their changes will improve food sovereignty,” said a BC Green spokesperson, “but that’s not what we’re hearing from small farmers.”

The change would be devastating to large parts of the ALR and would fuel land speculation that is already driving farmers away, they said. “Much of the land included in this provision is agricultural and should not be converted to industrial land.”