BC’s Farming and Food Future:
A Local Government Toolkit for Sustainable Food Production
Sustainable food production is a vital component of a community’s food system. It influences a community’s well-being, and it needs to be supported and enhanced by local governments.
Communities are becoming increasingly concerned about where their food comes from and how it is grown. Sustainable food production is as important to community well-being as housing, transportation, health, recreation, environment, and safety.
BC’s Farming and Food Future: A Local Government Toolkit for Sustainable Food Production supports municipalities and regional districts with tools to encourage sustainable food production for the benefit of their community.
It will help local government planners and politicians:
• create a favourable environment for sustainable food production;
• take a lead role in encouraging and supporting sustainable food production in BC.
As well as providing tools, the Toolkit suggests how to advocate for policies and programs that support local agriculture. It also gives basic information and resources about the state of agriculture in BC. This information helps planning staff respond to information requests from Council and the public, and integrate food production into policy, planning, and programs.
The Toolkit focuses on farm-based agriculture, but the tools, information, and resources can be applied to urban food production.
We encourage use of this information, and request that The Land Conservancy of British Columbia be credited.
The Community Farms Program is administered by FarmFolk/CityFolk Society, founded in collaboration with The Land Conservancy of British Columbia. The goal of the Community Farms Program is to actively secure farmland for present and future food production. We bring together landowners, farmers, local communities, and resources to develop and support community farm models in BC. For more information, please contact us.
BC’s Farming and Food Future: A Local Government Toolkit for Sustainable Food Production (pdf, 2.9 mb)
Last Modified: October 10, 2014