1.1. Agriculture and sustainability in the Lower Mainland
The Lower Mainland of British Columbia (Fig. 1), comprising two regional districts—
the Greater Vancouver and the Fraser Valley—covers an area of almost 17,000 km2, but
most of its current population of around 2.3 million people is based in the Lower Fraser
River valley, an area of roughly 7000 km2, extending from the town of Hope in the east to
Vancouver in the west.