Published by Edible Vancouver, Summer 2010
Author: Michael Marrapese
I grew up on the East Coast. Almost every kid had friends, aunts, uncles, or grandparents who lived on a farm. I remember playing in the corncribs, climbing trees in the orchards, picking baby corn, harvesting tomatoes in the summer, and binning potatoes in the fall. The smell of green peppers on a hot day and the taste of freshly pulled young carrots are still vivid memories forty years later.
But a lot has changed. The children from family farms have moved into towns, and cities have sprawled to consume farmland. About eighty per cent of Canada’s population now lives concentrated in urban areas, on what was once productive farmland. In rural parts of the Fraser Valley, large acreages are being held by numbered companies—often for speculative purposes.
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