by SUSAN MANN
The province’s current land-use planning guidelines treat farmland in the Golden Horseshoe as areas waiting to be developed for housing but a unique partnership between the Ontario Federation of Agriculture and an environmental group wants the provincial government to change that view.
The federation worked with Environmental Defence to jointly develop a number of recommendations so the province will recognize the economic and ecosystem benefits of Ontario’s farmland. The two groups jointly released a report, Tuesday, called Farmland At Risk: Why land use planning needs improvements for a healthy agricultural future in the Greater Golden Horseshoe.
Among the report’s recommendations is to place the area’s Class 1, 2 and 3 farmland under permanent protection.
The move would help farming thrive in the region, says Susan Lloyd Swail, Greenbelt program manager for Environmental Defence. “It would also allow municipalities to take farming concerns into their planning decision-making,” she says.
Federation president Don McCabe says for farmers, the protection would mean “that farmland will be available for production year after year after year.” It will ensure that the best asset in the region will be available for farm productivity, he says.
The report found that 75 per cent of the best farmland in the Toronto metropolitan area lies outside the protected Greenbelt area and is at risk of being paved over. Once soil is covered with pavement, it’s lost forever, Environmental Defence executive director Tim Gray says in a Tuesday news release.
The organizations’ decision to work together on the issue may seem novel but “we actually have a lot in common,” says Lloyd Swail.
McCabe says both groups have the same position that farmland needs to be protected. Without farmland protection, “how are we going to eat? Where are the environmental goods and services going to come from?”
Lloyd Swail says her group decided to partner with the federation on the report because the federation is the “place to go for information on farmland issues in Ontario. The federation knows the issues within the Growth Plan (for the Greater Golden Horseshoe) that affect farmers so it’s important to have that knowledgeable and experienced voice in this report.”
Environmental Defence, based in Toronto, has been involved in land use planning matters for about 10 to 15 years, particularly dealing with urban sprawl and local food production, she explains. “We’re really interested in how we can encourage smarter growth” for municipalities.
The Greater Golden Horseshoe is the area in southwestern and central Ontario partly wrapped around the western edge of Lake Ontario, stretching from Niagara and heading north to Orillia and out to Peterborough. Agriculture in the area contributes $11 billion annually to Ontario’s economy and generates 38,000 jobs. The sector also supplies $1.6 billion a year in environmental benefits, including carbon pollution absorption, water filtration, runoff control and erosion protection.
Lloyd Swail says farmland makes up about half of the land area in the Greater Golden Horseshoe. The other half is made up of urban development, roads and environmentally sensitive lands, such as land along watercourses and wetlands. “Agriculture is one of the most important economic sectors of the region.”
Almost 300,000 acres of prime farmland in the Greater Golden Horseshoe has been lost during the past 30 years. Additional farmland losses will have significant economic, environmental and quality-of-life impacts.
Grey says in the release that the Ontario government’s current reviews of the Greenbelt Plan and the Growth Plan for the Greater Golden Horseshoe present an opportunity to move away from the 1950’s car-centered model for planning cities to planning guidelines that provide housing options at the same time as supporting the agricultural industry.
Lloyd Swail says “urbanization affects farmland more than any other land.”
Among the groups’ other recommendations are:
- Freeze urban boundaries in the Greater Golden Horseshoe until 2031 and possibly to 2041. The Farmland At Risk report says there’s more than enough land within existing municipal boundaries to accommodate forecasted population growth.
- Tie provincial infrastructure fund allocations to municipalities meeting intensification targets.
- Require municipalities to do agricultural impact assessments when planning strategies that affect agricultural areas.
It will take a lot of public pressure to get the government to implement the groups’ recommendations, Lloyd Swail says. “I think it’s great Environmental Defence and Ontario Federation of Agriculture together are showing the province how we can make these land use plans work better.” BF
Comments
Who has given OFA and Environmental Defense the right to tell some one what they can do with their land ? If some one wants to sell it for development then they should be allowed to . What good has green belt done other than restrict farm buildings and increase taxes . Maybe these two groups need to buy the land if they want to control it .
The best save the farmland planning policy is to save the farm economy first. Dictating where development goes only causes that restriction to occur in adjacent areas.
Do you like to eat food?
Love to eat food . I am a farmer who many times struggles to make ends meet because of our cheap food policy in this country along with having to compete with other countries subsidized farmers . The sooner we have less land to produce food on the sooner farmers & family farms will get what they need to survive .
Have you ever seen a shortage of food at the grocery store ?
(2) We don't have a cheap food policy in this country thanks to supply management and ethanol.
(2) we do have a shortage of food at the moment or we wouldn't be importing close to 9 million pounds of butter to be used by commercial butter users - the only reason there isn't a shortage of butter at the grocery store is because domestic production is being diverted into retail channels, and, therefore, away from commercial users who will get the imports.
While farmers, especially the anonymous ones, love to repeat the fallacies that we have a cheap food policy and that there is no shortage of food, these claims are still, nonetheless, fallacies which, alas, need to constantly be dispelled.
Stephen Thompson, Clinton ON
We through out about 40% of the food consumers buy so stop shooting holes in the hull of you rubber dingy duck . No fallacy there .
When we here spend the same percentage of our wages on food as other places then you can say we don;t have a cheap food policy .
Butter alone does not make a meal . Might make you loose like cows on fresh grass in the spring .
So glug , glug glug goes your battle ship once more ! Hope you have your water wings on since you are sinking fast .
I'm not sure what a "rubber dingy duck" is, or what it is supposed to represent in the context used by the above anonymous poster, except possibly indicate the addled state of the poster's thought processes and/or indicate the consumption of thought-impairing amounts of alcohol by the poster.
For example, the word "dingy" means dirty or dull and I have, therefore, no idea what a dirty rubber duck is supposed to signify except the strong possibility that the above poster has, in addition to memory issues when it comes to his/her name, basic literacy issues.
The undeniable truth of the matter is that thanks to supply management and ethanol, Canada does NOT have a cheap food policy, period.
Stephen Thompson, Clinton ON
All l can say is l'm glad turkey is the traditional Christmas meat in our house and not Prime Rib roast.
Going by the rising retail prices of pork and beef in the last year and a half, no one could possibly think Canada has a cheap food policy but if would like to blame that on Supply Management and ethanol, then feel free to rant. However that is not what consumers are being told by either the beef or pork industries.
The article is to highlight what is happening with the resource base required to sustain an industry. Do we believe that is important and if so what policy should be put in place. Will so called climate change enhance or diminish our opportunity to be more food self sufficient. Should we care about urban sprawl. How should it be controlled and who should pay for it.
The article begs more questions than it answers about where we are going and what we value.
D Lyons
Caledon
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