Dear Editor,
Re: B.C. government allowing municipalities to limit cannabis production in cement-based greenhouses.
Let’s be clear here, although this is a well-intentioned step to preserve farmland for soil-based agriculture, perhaps it is not the most prudent.
The best case scenario would be for the province to regulate all buildings that infringe on potential future uses of the ALR (i.e. soil-based agriculture), because, as we have seen in Richmond, city councillors can make incoherent and incomprehensible decisions when it comes to farmland.
They want to ban cannabis production in cement bunkers on one hand, but they vote to continue to allow the building of massive mega mansions that also destroy soil-based agriculture and price farmland far out of the hands of farmers.
How can councillors be trusted to make good decisions when they are influenced by local developers?
Although there may be arguments for soilless agriculture, those cement-based greenhouses belong on marginal lands, industrial lands, or on top of buildings, not on class 1 soils.
What we need are provincial regulations to preserve soil: A full ban on cement-based, cannabis bunkers and on mega mansions that are both eating up fertile farmland across B.C.’s ALR.
Michelle Li
RICHMOND
