Land use planning; agricultural development; Food Security; Food Sovereignty;
Abstract :
[en] Food Security and Food Sovereignty are two of the most important issues
facing Food Policy. Maintaining productive farmland and sustainable farms
as well as providing adequate volumes of foodstuffs have led to measures to
protect farmland and farm activities in many countries. These include land use
planning with agricultural zones and in some jurisdictions legislation to ‘protect’
agriculture in agricultural reserves. Are these tools adequate to maintain
sustainable agricultures particularly around major urban and metropolitan
centers. Agricultural zones and agricultural reserves in many jurisdictions have
continued to experience removal of farmland in order to permit different types
of urban development (e.g. residential development and industrial parks). An
emerging response to this has been the integration of strategic development
planning for agriculture in certain jurisdictions (e.g. the province of Quebec
(Canada)), because this approach can integrate the necessary parameters to
enable the development of sustainable agricultures, including how to respond
to opportunities as well as adapting to emerging stressors. This approach also
ideally requires the integration of farmers and their families as actors and
participants in the strategic development planning process.