Dear Editor,
This photograph is of a “hobby farm” in Richmond. That is, it’s zoned AG1 and is half an acre on Blundell Road. Behind the lot, you can see a real farm – blueberries and a small farm market. On the left side is my neighbour and we are in a row of over 20 of these small lots, all are zoned AG1 and none of them are farmed.
My 2/3 of an acre (my 40-year-old home takes up the other third) has never been farmed since it was surveyed in the late 1940s. That’s right, it has been zoned AG1 for almost 70 years and has never been farmed.
It never will be farmed because it is too small to be viable, except for hobbyists who might farm it for their own pleasure and a small side income. It has nothing to do with “food security” or protecting farmland because it isn’t farmland. It’s just a large residential lot. Time has proven this with no farmers taking the slightest interest in it for decades and decades, long before the recent rise in value.
The value of this lot was low enough for the previous family to build my present home on it in the 1960s. They were an ordinary young family, not millionaires. They built a 2,500-square-foot home and lived in it until 2002. They were not farmers.
There are dozens of these never-have-been-and-never-will-be “farms” all over Richmond and Surrey. Every time the City of Richmond gives a building permit to build a large home on one of these lots it is effectively removing that lot from the Agricultural Land Reserve. That is assuming a new house will stand for 40-50 years.
All the city has to do is rezone these mythical farms to multi-family only and we can begin putting this land to some useful purpose other than mansion building.
For over 70 years, farmers have shown little interest in these tiny “farms.”
Paul Edwards
Richmond
