Benjamin Allan

Food security is a growing concern on Vancouver Island, with local farms producing only 5-10% of the food we consume. As such, we need financial incentives to encourage Saanich residents to produce their own food. Whether in the form of planting vegetables in small backyard gardens or tending to large scale farm land, there needs to be incentives to cultivate our local farms and stimulate local food production.

A few ideas I believe will help are:

Municipal Water Credits: many of our farms are on well water; those that are not on well water could apply for credits based on percentages of production volume increases each year.

Reduced Property Taxes: one example of this could be that an increase of X kg of food production would create a tax savings of Y%.

Bylaw Changes: we should make it easier to set up farm stands, thus enabling farmers to sell their produce to a larger market.

 

Buy Local: we need to find ways to bring more interest to our farms, potentially through the promotion of farm tourism, farm to table, and buy local programs.

 

Urban Agriculture: we should increase the availability of workshops and conferences to educate Saanich residents about backyard vegetable garden set up, seasonal maintenance of these gardens, and the many health benefits of growing and consuming backyard produce.

 

Community Gardens: we should make grants more readily available for groups that wish to set up community gardens.