Mayor McCallum pledges to protect City’s crucial 300-acre farmland if it is made available to the City of Surrey

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SURREY: Acknowledging Surrey’s unique Campbells Heights 300-acre farmland as “a vital piece”of fertile land, Surrey’s Mayor Doug McCallum has pledged to keep it sacrosanct after a group of farmers called on the federal government for not selling it to developers for industrial development.

The Mayor in a statement said, “Surrey is home to an abundance of rich farmland. The fertile land in question at 192nd Street and 36th Avenue is a vital piece of farmland that should remain untouched. If the federal government were to make this property available to the City of Surrey, I would ensure an offer would be made. If successful, I would pledge that the property would remain as farmland so it can produce harvest after harvest for generations to come.”

A group of farmers in Surreylaunched a petition to protect the land they farm, billed as one of the most productive in Canada, from being sold and converted into industrial property.

The petition which has close to 26K signatures, started by Tristin Bouwman, mentioned that the farmland is located on 192nd Street in Campbell Heights, Surrey BC is sadly, “slated to be sold and developed into industrial buildings,”

According to the petition, “Unlike other farmland in BC, this parcel is not protected by BC’s world-renowned Agricultural Land Reserve (ALR). Not only is the land not in the ALR, the landowner – the Federal Government – is not bound by the ALR’s farmland protection system.”

A coalition of farmers, residents, farmland advocates and others are calling on: the Federal Government to keep all 300 acres of this parcel in agriculture, forests and streams – by granting a long-term lease to a local farmer and applying to the Provincial Agricultural Land Commission to include it in the ALR; and, the City of Surrey to amend its Official Community Plan to prevent the land from conversion to any use other than farming and forest. 

With its beach-like sandy soil upon a level hill-top, it never floods, it can be planted or harvested on nearly any day of the year and has a special a micro-climate suited for early production. Western Canada’s potato harvest starts on this farmland each year.

Bouwmansaid,“an estimated 30-50 million servings of potatoes, carrots, cabbage, parsnips and squash are produced from the land annually. That’s enough fresh food to put a vegetable serving on every Metro-Vancouverite’s dinnerplate for 2-3 weeks. As harvest begins  before other vegetable fields in BC, this land reduces BC’s reliance on imported vegetables.