For immediate release - Tuesday April 07, 2009

    Vancouver, BC - After months of planning, the Great UBC Farm Trek is happening today, leaving from the University of British Columbias Student Union Building at 3:30 PM, and arriving at 5:30 PM at UBC Farm, 6182 South Campus Road, Vancouver, BC.

The Wilderness Committee has been intimately involved with the campaign to save the University of British Columbia Farm and the organizing of this historic march. The event is part of a tradition of various treks dating back to the 1922 march which helped bring about the founding of the university itself.

"Throughout the Lower Mainland and our province, we see the negative impacts urban sprawl is having on our farmland," said Ben West, healthy communities campaigner with the Wilderness Committee. "Not only is the UBC Farm the last remaining working farm in Vancouver but it has the potential to provide a model for how to do development right."

The UBC board has been considering various options as part of their latest campus development plan. Originally, three options were presented for the campus, all of which either reduced the size of the farm or moved it from its current location. More recently the board has committed to making the south campus a model for sustainability but it is still uncertain what that will mean for the farm.

"Elsewhere in the Lower Mainland, the Hudson's Bay farm, which is the first farm established by European settlers in Langley, is currently under threat from the federal-provincial Gateway project. In Delta, almost 100 hectares have just been removed from the Agricultural Land Reserve (ALR) as part of the same project, and now the Spetifore lands in Tsawwassen are under threat once again from condominiums covering a third of this invaluable land. All of these projects have been touted as sustainable yet clearly they all present threats to our food security," said West.

"If this is the kind of sustainable development we could see on provincial land at UBC then it is not truly sustainable. There is a lot more to functioning ecological systems than building condos with green amenities on our farmland," said West.

The Great Farm Trek is focused on maintaining long term security for the 24 hectares of land it encompasses plus stable funding and a meaningful role for stakeholders in decision-making. The UBC Farm doesn't just provide food and fosters farmers- it helps ensure the ecological knowledge needed to move toward a more sustainable world," said West.


For more information please contact:
Ben West, Wilderness Committee Healthy Communities Campaigner, 604-710-5340