"Great cities have great farmers' markets," said Tara McDonald, director of the non-profit group Vancouver Farmers' Markets, "They're known for their outdoor markets."

Vancouver may be about to take a step closer to such greatness. Tomorrow evening city council will consider a package of zoning changes, bylaw amendments and policy guidelines that would make it easier, and cheaper, to organize and participate in farmers' markets throughout the city.

"Paris is fantastic," said McDonald, "The city runs facilities, very rudimentary, all over the city. They're roofed, right out in the street, and powered so that they're lit at night and you can plug in, say, a freezer... That's the kind of system that we'd like to see here, woven into the fabric of the entire city."

The measures under consideration tomorrow will not compare to those standards yet, but McDonald said they are an important first step.

Her organization is promoting a last-minute letter-writing campaign through Facebook, encouraging Vancouver residents to write city council in support of the recommendations.

Currently, the obstacles facing markets on a municipal level are bureaucratic rather than ideological. They have the support of the council in theory, but in practice they exist in an uncomfortable administrative gray-area.

"The city council has been very pro-farmers' market. We think they really didn't realize how many restrictions there were on our operations," said McDonald. "At current rates it will become cost prohibitive very shortly to expand to more locations in Vancouver."

McDonald said that markets across the province are plagued by arbitrary and inconsistent restrictions on what can and cannot be sold in markets.

"You can't have cheese cut from blocks. In some farmers' markets you're not allowed to sell eggs, or you have to put a lot of signs up that say these eggs are not for public consumption. You can't buy fresh meat anywhere, it all has to be frozen... Milk is considered high-risk even if it's coming out of a refrigerated unit."

In 2008, the Ministry of Agriculture released the B.C. Agriculture Plan, which said that all British Columbians should have access to "safe, locally produced food." However, McDonald said that the promises of that plan have not been fulfilled.

"It said that they wanted to support small local family farms, that they wanted to swing the pendulum back away from the focus on exports," McDonald said, "But there hasn't been one dollar put towards any of that. The Ministry of Agriculture has no budget to implement any of this."

"Food is a resource. In British Columbia we're very good at selling off our resources. That's something that needs to change."

Ryan Elias is completing a practicum at The Tyee.