Ontario must put farmland first (editorial)

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Published on Saturday, 09 November 2013 01:01

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Our provincial government has missed an opportunity to protect a vital part of Ontario’s economy.

The recently tabled review of the Aggregate Resources Act (ARA) fails to put any importance on protecting agricultural land of any class.

However, the province’s agriculture industry contributes about $34 billion to the economy and supports more than 740,000 jobs across Ontario.

Farmer Brent Preston explained the financial value in farmland best during the ARA review committee’s stop in Orangeville.

“I only produce eight or 10 tonnes of salad a year on my farm, but I can produce salad in perpetuity,” Preston said. “You can only mine a tonne of gravel once.”

 

Preston’s viewpoint fell into the majority of testimony delivered in Orangeville.

Yet, the committee chose to let farmers take the land back after the aggregate industry finished with it. Rehabilitation is seen as the answer in the review instead of protection.

Rehab is a great idea, if hungry Ontarians have years to wait for their dinner.

According to the Canadian Environmental Law Association, the province already has about 7,000 abandoned pits and quarries, requiring 335 years for rehabilitation.

The idea of protecting farmland isn’t an isolated notion contained to Dufferin County.

Toronto city council recently joined numerous rural municipalities by approving a motion to ask the province to protect Class 1 farmland — an idea born right here in Dufferin, known as the Food and Water First campaign.

Public pressure to protect the land that feeds even scared away a $25 billion hedge fund from digging up Melancthon.

With the province’s largest city and a financial powerhouse understanding Ontarians prefer farmland stay intact, where is our government? Exactly whom does the locally grown Food and Water First campaign have to beg to make farmland a priority?

With documents like the ARA review, it’s getting more difficult to decipher exactly whom politicians serve.

By The Editor of the Orangeville Banner
Published in the Orangeville Banner, Nov. 6, 2013