In 2004, the City of Surrey, the Surrey Agricultural Advisory Committee, and the BC Ministry of Agriculture and Lands conducted an agricultural land use inventory. The inventory encompassed all land within the Agricultural Land Reserve (ALR) in addition to some land adjacent to the ALR. The results of the study appear in the Figures and Tables below.
Figure 1: Primary Land Use Activities, 2004
Table 1: Primary Land Use Activities within the ALR, City of Surrey, 2004
As shown in Table 1, approximately 8,692 ha of Surrey's total area is within the ALR. 5,864 hectares (or 67%) of that land is used primarily for agriculture.
Among those properties in the ALR that have agriculture as a primary land use, there are a wide range of farm operations. Forage and pasture, berry farms, and field vegetable farms are among the agricultural activities that occupy the largest amount of agricultural land within the ALR. Table 2 shows other agricultural activities that take place on Surrey agricultural land.
Figure 2: Primary Agricultural Land Use Activities, 2004
Table 2: Primary Agricultural Land Use Activities, City of Surrey, 2004
Between 2001 and 2004, 178 parcels in the ALR (13% of all parcels) underwent change related to agriculture. Some parcels had an increase in agricultural use (e.g. expanded livestock structure, new fields in crop production) while others underwent a net decrease (e.g. abandoned crop, removed livestock). Other parcels had a change in the type of agricultural land use (e.g. forage converted to blueberry production). Agriculture is generally expanding in Surrey: the net increase in agricultural production is greater than the net loss, both in terms of area of land and in terms of the number of parcels in use.