Urban sprawl, business developments and intensive agriculture have ignited a divisive debate across Alberta.
The problem, says rancher Harvey Buckley, is that Alberta has no proper land use strategy.
“With all the economic strength and growth that’s going on in Alberta, we’re starting to get a full appreciation of what all these land use problems are about,” he said.
Municipalities have the final authority in approving agricultural and residential building developments, but inconsistencies are starting to appear.
“What you need is managed growth, balanced growth, smart growth,” Buckley said.
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He ranches near Cochrane where farm and rangeland are succumbing to $500,000 homes on small subdivisions.
“We’ve got more of the ‘Alberta advantage’ around Calgary than we can handle.”
He is active with an organization called Action for Agriculture that started as a lobby group 11 years ago to protect farms.
Alberta Agriculture’s summit held in June recognized the need to protect productive farmland. A committee formed to pursue this met with government at the beginning of July. Buckley hopes a special conference will be held to fully debate land use.
The most controversial development for many jurisdictions is intensive livestock farms. Community halls and county council chambers fill to capacity as ratepayers protest new farms or expansions.
The County of Forty Mile rejected a 7,200-sow farm proposed by Taiwan Sugar Corp. The company announced it plans to appeal the decision.
County residents who opposed the $41 million development vow to use every means possible to block the proposal.
Feedlot owner Cor Van Raay of Picture Butte applied to build a 25,000-head yard. The County of Lethbridge told him a 14,000-head lot was more acceptable. He appealed that ruling and lost at the end of July.
Keith Wilson, an Edmonton lawyer with a large agricultural practice recently received three new cases dealing with intensive livestock development within 24 hours.
“The system is not working,” Wilson said. “It is killing developments.”
Wilson said the province made a mistake in turning over these highly technical decisions to municipalities under the umbrella of land use bylaws. Many have worked hard with available resources, he added, but the decisions are often too much for them.
“It is unfair to put the onus entirely on a municipality to handle these decisions.”
Hog production in Alberta is shrinking because smaller farms are getting out of the business and bigger barns are not built because they cannot get approved.
“No other industry goes through a community scrutiny of technical standards like the ag community does,” he said. “Could oil and gas go through the process that agriculture has to go through?”
Demands for provincial regulations spurred the government to assign a stakeholder group that cobbled together a comprehensive set of standards and regulations. It recommended that technical decisions should rest with the province while the municipalities continue to handle land use approvals.
Agriculture minister Ty Lund shelved the document, saying more consultation was needed. He has not been available for comment.
Paul Hodgeman of the Alberta Pork Producers Development Corp. said there are two issues at stake: The province does not have strong right-to-farm legislation, and there are no workable standards and regulations.
“Farmers need protection to stay in business and neighbors need protection for their quality of life.”
