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Agricultural land use is undervalued

We are failing to prepare by looking after the fundamental resources which they will need
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Building Site C dam means flooding land that could be valuable for growing crops. (BLACK PRESS file)

BY MARJORIE STEWART

Browse the Internet for ‘highest and best use’ and you will see an endless list of postings making it abundantly clear that (according to those who plan our communities and the real estate sector) the highest and best use is housing and associated land, whether for houses on small lots or ‘estates’ with buildings and extra private land.

I beg to differ. While clothing and shelter from the elements are important, they cannot displace air, water and food as the absolute essentials. I’m not even going to get into monetary values as a measurement of value. There are already far too many people on this planet with no immediate likelihood of humans escaping to space to make money a useful means of measuring real value. In fact, the production of food, real food, not junk food, is the highest and best use of land.

We are fast moving out of the period of available oil which fuels the comfortable lifestyles to which everyone aspires and we must face the very strong probability that we will have to return to the real work of human energy to sustain ourselves.

I have given up tolerating vague notions that alternative forms of energy will replace the huge amounts of power we are squandering from rapidly depleting oil resources. Every alternative relies on the sun, including the water cycles that provide hydroelectric power. In any case, electric power is not going to replace the energy from the past which was stored in the fossil fuels.

Life is going to be very different for future generations and we are failing to prepare by looking after the fundamental resources which they will need.

I don’t think electricity is more important than food. But every level of government seems to disagree.

While we are entertaining ourselves with the antics of the clown just elected to the south, our leaders have made a $9-billion megaproject decision with far-reaching consequences. Site C dam will result in the largest withdrawal from the agricultural land reserve in B.C.’s history. Eighty-three kilometres of the Peace River will be flooded and widened up to three times, along with 10km of the Moberly and 14km of the Halfway rivers.

Proceeding with the Site C Dam for electricity we do not currently need, but will probably sell to the U.S.A., will impact over 57,000 acres of agricultural and forested land. According to Ken Boone, president of the Peace Valley Landowner Association, the “very best farmland in all of northern B.C. will be lost … It has everything you need to grow so many different crops. To flood that would be a heartbreaking loss. Future generations will probably judge us by it.”

Domestic demand for electricity is going down. Economic growth is over, the forestry industry is hoping to get into real estate, soaring prices depress demand and a growing number of people are going ‘off the grid.’

Saving trees and soils which absorb greenhouse gases is more important than an excess of electricity.

Marjorie Stewart is past chairwoman of the Nanaimo Foodshare Society. She can be reached at marjorieandalstewart@gmail.com.