Sustainable Food Systems and Security

Threat and Threatened: Agriculture’s Dual Role in B.C.’s Fraser Valley Floods

Laurel McBride
SFSS 6110 - Environment and Food Systems (Instructor: Michael Bomford)
December 2024

Abstract

The Fraser Valley in British Columbia is the province’s most productive agricultural region, owing to its proximity to local and international markets and its rich agricultural land. However, the region’s history as an agricultural hub is relatively recent and is a product of settler colonialism. This was achieved through the displacement of the Indigenous Stó:lō peoples, whose name is derived from the mighty river that cuts through the valley, colonially referred to as the Fraser River. Diking infrastructure erected to protect settlers and farmland from the Fraser River’s freshets has failed to withstand significant floods, most recently in 2021. Climate change is accelerating the occurrence of flooding and other extreme weather events. This paper makes the case that while agriculture is threatened by climate change, it is also a driver of it, as witnessed in the Fraser Valley. To prevent future devastation, the status quo will not suffice. The paper calls for a provincial flood response informed by genuine recognition of the floodplain’s natural behaviors and dependent ecosystems. Out of a spirit of redress and reconciliation, this can be done in partnership with its original stewards, while ensuring a sustainable and functioning food system.

Introduction

British Columbia’s Fraser Valley is regarded as an agricultural powerhouse in the province. Although the region accounts for only 2.4% of the total farmland in British Columbia (BC), it generates nearly 40% of the province’s gross annual farm receipts (Senate of Canada, 2022). It is also extraordinarily susceptible to flooding with an estimated 42% of its Agricultural Land Reserve assessed as at risk (BC Agriculture & Food Climate Action Initiative, 2017).

In this paper, I will examine how the colonial-era development of this region’s farmland created fertile conditions for food production while simultaneously consigning its inhabitants to repeated risk to life and livelihood due to flooding. This development is founded on the displacement of Indigenous peoples and interventions that interfere with the natural functions and the ecosystems of Stó:lō (Fraser River) and related waterways, including the draining of Xhotsa (Sumas Lake) (Finn et al., 2024). 

Using the flood of November 2021 and the destruction that occurred in the Fraser Valley as a reference point, I will outline how anthropogenic climate change, driven in part by agricultural activities, has exacerbated the colonially created susceptibility of the region. This paper will argue that agriculture has assumed a dual role of becoming at risk and perpetrating some of that risk. Finally, I will explore potential actions for mitigating future flood risk premised on a course that departs from business as usual. 

Development of the Fraser Valley

The Fraser Valley Regional District (FVRD) is east of Metro Vancouver and consists of eight regional districts and six municipalities beginning with Abbotsford, and continuing east beyond Hope (Fraser Valley Regional District, n.d.a). The powerful Fraser River (Stó:lō) flows through this region and beyond to connect with the Salish Sea. At 1375 kilometers, it is the longest river in B.C. and its 240,000 square kilometers make it the fifth-largest drainage system in Canada. It is also one of the most productive salmon river systems, a critical habitat for sturgeon, and provides breeding and overwintering grounds to many bird species (Fraser Basin Council, n.d.). The river is fed by mountain snow and is subject to seasonal fluctuations in its flow. Factors such as snow volume and rapidly rising spring temperatures can create flooding events where the river overflows its typical boundaries, which was the cause of the devastating historic floods of 1894 and 1948 (Gandolfo-Lucia, 2024). 

As part of a pattern throughout the lands referred to as Canada, Indigenous people were dispossessed from their territories and forced onto reservations by the Canadian government and its pre-confederation frontrunners. According to Finn et al. (2024) and Gandolfo-Lucia (2024), in what would become the Fraser Valley, the peoples of the Stó:lō Nation were displaced to make way for European settlers. As settler colonialism in the area intensified in the late 1800s, the new inhabitants began to request aid from the province to combat the flooding the region was prone to. While the Stó:lō had lived in accordance to the river’s rhythms, the settlers sought to control the river and built iterations of dikes, each attempting to improve on the failures of the last. Within this context, the draining of Sumas Lake (Xhotsa) in the 1920s was executed not only to protect the settler farmers of the area, but also as a means of expanding their population. The authors explain that the creation of colonial infrastructure like dikes and drainage disrupted the ecology of the area which decimated the food systems that the Stó:lō people relied on for sustenance. Not only were they were left to fend against starvation but also flooding due to their reservations’ proximity to, and lack of protection from, the dikes. Colonial policy and infrastructure facilitated an expansion of the settler population and its agriculture sector with 337,000 people now residing in the district (Fraser Valley Regional District, n.d.a).

Events of 2021 and the Role of Climate Change

In November 2021, southern British Columbia suffered devastating flooding and mudslides, this time triggered by a series of atmospheric rivers that generated extreme volumes of precipitation (Gillett et al., 2022). The province’s diking system, managed by individual municipalities, failed to prevent the flood (Parfitt, 2023). A provincial state of emergency was declared and was in effect from November 17, 2021, until January 18, 2022 (British Columbia Government, 2022). During this period, five people were killed as a result of the mudslide on Highway 99 and evacuation orders displaced multiple communities and nearly 20,000 people (Global Medic, n.d.; Global News, 2021). The resulting damages were estimated at $675 million for insured property alone, making it the most costly in the province’s history (Insurance Bureau of Canada, 2022). 

Agricultural land and enterprises were among those hit. According to Agriculture and Agri-food Canada (2022), “1100 farms, 15,000 hectares, and 2.5 million livestock from the Sumas Prairie in Abbotsford to Merritt and Princeton were impacted by the floods.” Included in this are the deaths of more than 640,000 livestock (CTV News, 2021). Additionally, road washouts, bridge collapses, and damaged rail infrastructure impeded the flow of inputs such as grain and curbed agricultural processing activities, exacerbating economic hardship (Senate of Canada, 2022). In recognition of the immense financial burden, a federal-provincial fund was created to compensate farmers for uninsurable infrastructure repair, cleanup costs, and expenses required to jumpstart production (British Columbia, 2023). However, in the spring of 2024, Brad Vis, MP for Mission–Matsqui–Fraser Canyon, criticized that the aid rollout had been slow with infrastructure repairs incomplete and the area remains vulnerable to future disasters (CBC, 2024).

The flood came on the heels of an earlier extreme weather event, a “heat dome” in June of 2021. The record-setting heatwave was responsible for the deaths of over 600 people and 650,000 farm animals, crop loss and reduced yields (White et al., 2023). The value of these production declines represents at least $25 million in lost revenue (Beugin et al., 2023). 

In assessing both events, evidence suggests that human-induced climate change contributed to its occurrence and severity (Gillett et al., 2022; White et al., 2023). While anthropogenic climate change is diverse in terms of its sources, Rockström et al. (2020) aptly noted, “The global food system is a prime driver — and generally the first victim — of the Anthropocene” (p. 3). This tension is clear when one examines the history of the Fraser Valley and the devastation visited upon it. 

Agriculture as a Driver of Climate Change

While the colonial interventions of the 19th and 20th centuries disrupted and ignored Stó:lō’s natural floodplain, resulting in devastating floods for the communities living close to the Fraser River, this dynamic is worsened by the growing impacts of climate change and resulting extreme weather events. BC Agriculture & Food Climate Action Initiative (2017) noted, “in response to more significant increases in greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions, a flood equivalent to the 1894 flood of record with a present return period of roughly 500 years could have a return period in the order of 50 years at the end of the century.” 

Statistics Canada (2024) reports that “in 2022, the agriculture sector was the 5th largest source of GHG emissions, accounting for 10% of total national emissions with 70 megatonnes of carbon dioxide equivalent.” While growing emissions associated with crop production are responsible for the increasing level of overall emissions, the largest source of GHG emissions is the methane created through enteric fermentation of beef and dairy cattle (Statistics Canada, 2024; Fouli et al., 2021). 

The province’s dairy, pork, poultry and egg production industries are concentrated in the Fraser Valley, with 77% of the dairies located in the region (BC Dairy, n.d.; Canadian Agricultural Partnership et al., 2020). The region is also home to a large segment of the province’s berry, field vegetable, and greenhouse production (BC Agriculture & Food Climate Action Initiative, 2017). As a major economic driver, the Fraser Valley’s agriculture and agri-food sector continues to intensify and expand. The region contributed 44% of the total provincial increase of gross farm receipts from 2010 to 2015, with nearly 20,000 full-time workers employed in the sector (Fraser Valley Regional District, n.d.a). While agriculture is noted as a driver of increasing GHGs, the region’s action plan is still in its early stages. The FVRD’s 2023-2026 Strategic Plan calls for developing a regional Climate Action Plan to address the reduction of regional GHGs and for measurements to be taken (Fraser Valley Regional District, n.d.b).

Recommendations

In 2003, the Flood Hazard Statutes Amendment Act transferred the authority for dike maintenance and flood protection planning from the province to the municipalities. The management system grew disorganized, with many dikes going unmaintained. The inadequacies were publicly known and well-documented before the disaster of 2021, many failing to meet the provincial standards (BC Agriculture & Food Climate Action Initiative, 2017; Parfitt, 2023). In an attempt to restore this responsibility to the province, the Union of BC Municipalities (UBCM) passed successive resolutions in 2014, 2015, and 2022, complaining of a lack of resources and jurisdictional access (Parfitt, 2023; UBCM, 2015). The Canadian Centre for Policy Alternatives has echoed this call from the UBCM, however, the province’s Flood Strategy explicitly rejects this approach and offers municipalities additional investments and guidance (Parfitt, 2023; British Columbia, 2024). Restoring this critical responsibility to a centralized and well-resourced authority that can be held accountable for its performance is a small but crucial step.

Not only were many of the dikes inadequate to begin with, but the extreme weather event of 2021 destroyed flood mitigation and other critical infrastructure such as bridges, roads, and water treatment plants (Merrit, n.d.). The rebuilding and reimaging of the region is underway but experts remain divided on what system will best serve the inhabitants and industries of the Fraser Valley. One option is to restore and improve the current system premised on dikes. This route calls for capital investment to rebuild damaged dikes, raise their heights, conduct necessary seismic upgrades, and build new and upgraded pump stations (Senate of Canada, 2022). Some of these efforts have started since the 2021 flood, with the province committing $76.6 million to upgrade the Barrowtown Pump Station in Abbotsford (British Columbia Office of the Premier, 2024). However, critics caution that these measures effectively maintain the status quo and are not adaptive to the shorter return cycles we will increasingly experience under intensifying climate change (Parno, 2024).

Another route is the managed retreat: the intentional relocation of people and property out of an area subject to continued risk to life and livelihood. It is accomplished through government buyout of the designated land to allow the restoration of natural floodplain habitat. Proponents advance that there is an economic case for retreating from the former lakebed of Xhotsa. Depending on the particulars based on the extent of the retreat - it may involve some diking infrastructure in addition to buying out designated properties - it is financially competitive with the various future pathway scenarios proposed by the City of Abbotsford. Outside of the economic case, other benefits include habitat restoration for at-risk Fraser River salmon and scope for reconciliation with the Stó:lō peoples (Finn et al., 2024).  This route has been dismissed as politically untenable due to undermining local food security by removing valuable farming land from production and forcing people from their homes (Parno, 2024). While some may decry the viability of such actions, precedent can be found with the Grand Forks region buying out over 70 homes and properties to restore the floodplain after a series of significant floods in 2017-18 (Federation of Canadian Municipalities & Environment and Climate Change Canada, 2021). The success of this rests on fairness in buyouts for those impacted that enable them to re-establish themselves and transparency of the considerations that guided the process. 

A third route falls somewhere in between, that of passive water storage. This approach calls for the floodplain area to have greater flexibility to accommodate its natural fluctuations. This can be achieved through setback dikes, which Parno (2024) described as “constructed further inland, away from the river or shoreline, compared to traditional dikes” (p.13). Whereas traditional dikes have confined rivers, this method allows the river to reconnect with its floodplain during floods and lowers the risk of overtopping the dikes during a flood (Parno, 2024).

Reviewing other jurisdictions that have implemented setback dikes of at least 100 feet, Smith et al. (2017) noted favorable results with the Missouri River Basin, allowing the dike system to withstand a 125-year flood over the previous system’s capacity of an 80-year flood. In addition to greater flood protection, the co-benefits include sediment management and improved salmon habitat. While to a lesser extent compared to the managed retreat, some land must be removed from production through government buybacks or easement agreements. Affected farmers are likely to be resistant though other jurisdictions have found ownership retention and easement agreements more palatable (Parno, 2024). 

In conclusion, anthropogenic climate change is shortening the return periods of freshet floods and creating conditions for extreme weather events such as atmospheric rivers and heatwaves in B.C.’s Fraser Valley. As was evidenced in 2021, this has severe consequences for the region’s residents and the economy, most significantly, the food system. While the food system is unreservedly a victim of climate change, it dually plays a role in creating it, notably through GHG emissions. The FVRD recognizes the need to reduce GHGs, including in their intensive agriculture sector but action remains slow to materialize.

Three years on, the region remains vulnerable to flooding, with many recognizing the status quo condemns the past to be repeated. As Parsons and Fisher (2022) stated in relation to the Māori context, “the dominance of settler conceptions of floods as hazard perpetuated maladaptive responses and environmental injustices that adversely affected [Indigenous peoples] and their relationship to the natural world, which continue into the present” (p. 2). Viable alternatives exist and offer another path. The province can reassume central authority for the flood infrastructure; and work alongside the Stó:lō communities, Fraser Valley Regional District, and agricultural producers to designate land that will be returned to the Fraser River’s floodplain with reconciliation, food security, and climate mitigation principles guiding the process.

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