A proposal to develop an urban agriculture strategy in the City of North Vancouver provoked a testy exchange between councillors Monday night.

Coun. Craig Keating, himself an avid grower of produce, proposed that staff work out an overall strategy for growing food in the city.

Council has already given the go-ahead to a pair of pilot projects on city-owned land, but several councillors balked at spending more staff time on studying the issue.

Under questioning from Coun. Bob Fearnley, city engineer Steven Ono estimated that producing the strategy could take months, although a portion of the work would happen anyway as part of the upcoming official community plan update.

"I'm quite astounded at the estimated time it would take to come up with a comprehensive report," said Coun. Pam Bookham, who said while residents are free to cultivate fruits and vegetables, the city should focus its time and money on other issues. "If food security becomes an issue, we will be plowing up every available space, just as we did in the Second World War with the victory gardens," she said. "But at the moment we have grocery stores; we have Whole Foods bringing in foods from far away."

"This is one of those delightful motions that is relatively harmless but a bit silly," commented Coun. Guy Heywood. "We all know the best farmland on the North Shore is in the districts, not in the city, and we would rely on them for the production of our foodstuffs."

Heywood said any discussion of a citywide strategy should come after the two pilot projects had provided reports to council.

"According to that language," shot back a visibly annoyed Keating, "the City of Richmond is a silly place; the City of Burnaby is a silly place; the City of Vancouver is a silly place; Metro Vancouver is a silly place and all the people who have encouraged me to bring this forward in our community are silly people. . . . If the suggestion is that we have to wait until we are in a food crisis and then we start digging up our front yards, I think we'll have eaten each other's livers and legs by that time."

With Coun. Rod Clark absent, the issue appeared deadlocked at three votes on either side. But following an extended appeal from Mayor Darrell Mussatto, Fearnley reluctantly tipped the balance in favour of the study.

"It's probably quite a positive thing," he said. "I just don't want to see a hell of lot of staff time spent on it."

balldritt@nsnews.com