Port Coquitlam is celebrating 10 years of its farmers' market while Coquitlam Farmers Market for fresh fruits, vegetables and homemade goods has been a community fixture for even longer.
What makes them so successful? Increasingly, the public understands the importance of supporting local farmers and vendors. There is nothing like biting into a strawberry grown in the Fraser Valley rather than in California.
But there is more to these public institutions than taste and good health. If we don’t support B.C. farming, we won’t have an agricultural sector and farmland will be taken over by development.
This is already happening with increasing pressure to develop on lands outside Metro Vancouver’s urban containment boundary (a public hearing to re-designate 23.7 hectares of rural land in south Surrey for a 145-lot subdivision is a case in point).
Use it or lose it, they say, and shopping at a farmers' market is a good place to start.
