Sean Patrick Sullivan, THE CANADIAN PRESS

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VANCOUVER - In addition to the usual assortment of items not permitted at concerts - alcohol, audio recorders, pets - security guards at this weekend's Pemberton Festival might be frisking attendees for something different: root vegetables.

Enlarge Photo

THE ASSOCIATED PRESS/Chris Pizzello

Chris Martin, right, and Jonny Buckland of the band Coldplay will perform at the Pemberton Festival.

The Pemberton valley produces 60 per cent of British Columbia's potato crop, and farmers in the lush, green region north of Vancouver make a living by shipping their prized, virus-free seed to potato farms across North America.

But with 40,000 music fans set to descend on the picturesque village of Pemberton, organizers are telling them to leave their potatoes - and with them any potential viruses that could upset the region's ecosystem - at home.

The Pemberton Festival is billed as Canada's answer to Britain's Glastonbury and America's Coachella and Woodstock - multi-day concerts that see tens of thousands of people camping in an open field as they enjoy several days of music.

Coldplay, the Tragically Hip, Tom Petty and the Heartbreakers, Jay-Z and Nine Inch Nails lead the pack of established bands, while Vampire Weekend, Wintersleep, Kathleen Edwards, Buck 65, and Death Cab for Cutie help give the festival its indie cred.

For Shane Bourbonnais, the Live Nation executive behind the event, a successful concert means appeasing fickle music fans and the farmers of Pemberton alike.

Bourbonnais, who owns a summer home in the community of 3,000, has brought residents on board, including local farmers who will provide food for the hungry masses.

"The philosophy (of providing local food) is keeping it within the 100-mile" radius, he said. "Environmentally, we don't want to be trucking up everything from California or Chile."

The festival aims to become mostly sustainable in future years - assuming it's a success - where all produce and meat is coming from Pemberton farmers, he said.

Bourbonnais says there's little that organizers are not prepared for.

"We've planned for every emergency that could possibly happen, from a water contamination to a bear in the campground to an earthquake," he said from his temporary Pemberton office.

More than 500 security guards, as well as a contingent of RCMP officers, will patrol the campground and festival grounds. There will also be a full-service medical staff of 280 on site, including trauma doctors and a mini-hospital with 14 beds.

The campground alone has sold about 21,000 permits. It forms a horseshoe around the festival site, but is broken up into quadrants, Bourbonnais said. Each area has its own security, medical centre, general store and showers.

To pass time in the mornings or take a break from bands, local businesses will be on hand offering to whisk concert-goers away from the noise and into the forest. White-water rafting, glider soaring, horseback riding and zip-trek tours are among the perks of setting the festival in a mountain valley.

Festival-goers, paying nearly $300 per ticket for the July 25-27 event, will face a traffic-packed drive up the narrow, winding coastal highway between Vancouver and Pemberton, just north of Whistler.

The Sea-to-Sky Highway is undergoing massive construction as the province prepares for the 2010 Winter Olympic Games, and parts of the highway are marked down to 30 kilometres per hour.

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On the web:

www.pembertonfestival.com.