Dear Editor,
We have all seen massive houses being built on our precious farmland. Richmond city council is reconsidering bylaws to govern the size of homes on farmland. However, much of the focus is misguided.
I fear the strategy for some on council is to avoid reducing the size of these mansions, but rather just appear to be taking action by talking about the size of home plates or where the septic tank is located.
This approach doesn’t make a whit of difference to the dwindling number of active farms, to the next generation who might want to purchase a productive farm, to the youth who might want to lease a farm, to food security.
There is a fatal flaw in just focusing on the farm home plate. It misses the driving motivation that is causing the loss of productive farm land. If we continue to allow mansions that are thousands of square feet bigger than what can be built on residential zoned land, we are creating an incentive for speculators to buy up farmland. They will bid up the value of this productive land. Late economist Richard Wozny has written that we must limit home sizes to 4,200 square feet, otherwise, this wholesale loss of farmland will continue. Respected local economist Helmut Pastrick presented the same argument in previous public hearings.
The owner of that multi-million dollar mansion on farmland is not interested in farming. Saying everything will be OK, and we are restricting the size of the home plate (but you can still build that mansion) is just a smoke screen. If none of the property will be farmed, then a smaller home plate doesn’t help one bit. Zero farming plus land from smaller home plate still equals zero.
If Richmond does not significantly drop the size limit for houses on farmland, the loss will continue. I sure hope we don’t start seeing ghost (empty) houses on farmland as we see in neighbourhoods.
Steve Guthrie
RICHMOND
