MAY 2015
CELEBRATING 136 YEARS AS CANADA’S PREMIER HORTICULTURAL PUBLICATION
VOLUME 65 NUMBER 05
LAND USE PLANS
Sustainable farmers are key to rural infrastructure
In southern Ontario, 160,000 acres of farmland were lost between 2007 and 2011. That stark fact adds urgency to the simultaneous reviews of land use planning including the Greenbelt Plan, Oak Ridges Moraine Plan, Niagara Escarpment Plan and Golden Horseshoe Plan. The Holland Marsh, shown above, and the Niagara Peninsula’s tender fruit area fall under that review. What’s at stake is the future sustainability of this prime farmland at the outskirts of cities that house nine million consumers. Photos by Glenn Lowson.
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KAREN DAVIDSON Bradford, Ontario -- A man-made river runs through it. And a six-lane highway too. This is the Holland Marsh, one of the two sensitive agricultural areas protected by Ontario’s Greenbelt Plan. It’s now a decade since the contentious plan was enshrined by the provincial government, and by law, the growth plan is up for review along with three other land use plans: Niagara Escarpment, Oak Ridges Moraine and the Golden Horseshoe. While these plans had different origins, this is an ideal time for a unified approach. The intent of the Greenbelt plan was to protect prime farmland but nonetheless,160,000 acres have disappeared under the bulldozers of townhome developers and highway engineers. According to the Ontario Federation of Agriculture, that’s 350 acres lost every day. Can this plan be deemed a
success? That’s been under debate this spring as provinciallyorganized town hall meetings have sprung up like maple sap spigots. It’s too early to say if their harvest will be sweet. “While farmers within the Greenbelt are generally supportive of the plan, many want changes and assurances that farmers can be sustainable,” says Avia Eek, Holland Marsh onion and carrot farmer. “It’s not enough to protect the land if farmers aren’t permitted to be profitable through value-added, on-farm activities or they can’t get their perishable product to market through increasing gridlock.” In the Greenbelt alone, there are 5,500 family farms. Not only are they producing food, they are stewarding large areas of natural heritage features, water, woodlands and wildlife. One of the key points to emerge from the town hall meetings is that multi-generational farmers shouldn’t be responsible for the
buffer zones. Developers should shoulder the costs. From her experience as a municipal councillor, Eek sees that connectivity of agricultural systems should be maintained. Encroaching urban areas and higher traffic volumes put stress on the safe movement of farm equipment, especially if land or rental acres are not contiguous. “Language and intent of the policies should be consistent across all these plans,” says Eek. “The four plans were written at different times and for different purposes, but they should now be aligned with the provincial policy statement. We now have the opportunity to amend the policy to actually support agricultural operations.” Phil Tregunno, chair of the Ontario Tender Fruit Growers, agrees with this assessment. “The key issue is that farmers need to own the land,” says Tregunno who farms with his family at Niagara-on-the-Lake. “We do not want to become
tenant farmers beholden to land speculators. My ancestors left Europe for a better life precisely because they were tenant farmers. We shouldn’t let this happen again.”
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Language and intent of the policies should be consistent across all these plans.” ~ Avia Eek
The Niagara peninsula, with its 7,800 acres of tender fruit, is also attractive to citizens purchasing land for non-farming purposes. In fact, land ownership in agricultural belts is a hot topic right now. CONTINUED ON PAGE 3