the Value of Farmland BY R ENE VA N AC K ER
On April 5, as the long winter delivered another startling blast, more than 200 people struggled through the storm to attend a meeting in Shelburne, hosted by NDACT and Food & Water First. The topic was the preservation of Ontario’s prime farmland and the event offered the opportunity to meet Tom Eisenhauer, whose company, Bonnefield Financial, recently purchased the Melancthon quarry lands with the promise to keep them in agriculture. Other speakers included champion anti-quarry broadcaster Dale Goldhawk and Steve Peters, a former Ontario minister of agriculture and now executive director of the Alliance of Ontario Food Processors. But, perhaps surprisingly, the man who in many ways stole the show with his com bination of passion and hard numbers was crop scientist Rene Van Acker, a professor and dean of external relations at the University of Guelph. Here is the text of his speech.
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IN THE HILLS Summer 2014
T
he Food & Water First movement is showing real leadership in taking the next step in the evo lution of Canada’s food culture. The fact that Canadians are increasingly interested in what they are eating cre ates a real change in our population in terms of what is important to them. The environmental movements of the late ’70s and early ’80s were born of a need to rally against industrial excess and its relationship to the planet, or lack of relationship to the planet. And although this movement made a real impact, in many ways it has waned. It is not that the founding principles are any less important now,
