Editor: I am a South Langley resident who has been extremely affected by the blasting of blueberry cannons. It has become such an unbearable situation that I have taken the time to attend all of the meetings being held by the task force appointed by the AAC (Agricultural Advisory Committee) to look into this issue over the past several months.
When I started attending, it was with high hopes and admiration for the volunteer task force members who donated their time to research and holding public hearings. Their last meeting on March 1 however made it clear that no one is comfortable taking a firm stand.
After months of research and many binders full of paper, they only concluded that “some changes be made.”
What? We started off knowing that some changes needed to be made — that is why the task force was created in the first place. I had hoped for a spirited discussion, with everyone being free to voice their opinions, resulting in a hammered-out, detailed description that would be passed on to Township council, stating exactly the who, what, where, when and how.
The residents of Langley Township need specifics and they need them before this berry season arrives.
The public forum held in January made it very clear that the current guidelines are unreasonable to most residents. Blasting at deafening levels, from dawn to dusk, seven days a week for several months a year makes it impossible for humans or animals to comfortably live nearby. It is also a severe safety issue for neighbours who ride horses, which many residents of the “Horse Capital of B.C.” do.
Alternative methods for protecting crops from birds exist and are successfully used by some of the largest local berry growers, proving that the cannons are not a necessary farming tool. Many people believe that they should be banned completely in high density areas like the Lower Mainland, but at the very least their usage needs to be severely restricted. We need to all be agriculturally socially responsible.
I like to believe that enough people with the same goal can cause change, so hopefully Langley residents do not give up on this issue.
K. Madill,
Langley
