Short answer: Yes. Site C represents the largest removal of Agricultural Land Reserve (ALR) land in BC history. BC has very few good agricultural valleys, and even fewer valleys of the Peace’s top agricultural quality: ~100 kilometres of extremely deep fertile soils, a perfect east-west orientation, and extremely long sunlight hours in summer. With the climate and agricultural crisis in California and other sources of BC’s food imports, BC food security means we will need every farming valley we have, especially this one.

The Long Answer

Class A farmland is rare in BC. Also rare is an east-west valley, the ideal orientation. The Peace Valley is hot and sunny in summer and enjoys extremely long growing hours. Peace farmers can even grow peaches, canteloupe and watermelon. As climate change desiccates lower latitudes, the North will become a very important zone for food production. BC cannot spare this valley.

We often hear: “If the 100+ kms of the Peace River valley that Site would submerge is such great farmland, why is it not more intensively farmed now? There’s currently only a little hay and some market gardens and not much more.”

The answer to this objection is that while there are numerous farms in the valley, more intensive farming has been discouraged because although Site C was rejected multiple times in the past, BC Hydro has never removed its lands from the Site C flood reserve. No farmer would make significant improvements to the land given the perpetual uncertainty that land might be expropriated for a dam at some future point. BC Hydro owns significant property in the flood reserve and has slowly bought up most of it. Some farmers have decided to keep farming until the last minute; but this valley can never be properly farmed until Site C is not only stopped but removed from the books permanently.

Top BC agrologist Wendy Holm showed in her expert testimony to the Site C Joint Review Panel that the Peace River valley if farmed to its potential could fill all the produce needs of over a million British Columbians. This would also mean that produce from the south and California would not have to be shipped thousands of kilometres north. Read her summary in the Georgia Straight.