Millions of Acres Lost

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Published on Thursday, 12 February 2015 15:25

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In a November 2014 Ontario Farmer article by Alex Binkley, we read that almost 2.5  million acres of prime farmland (Class 1) went out of food production across Canada between 2001 and 2011.

The agri-food sector currently generates $34 billion a year in gross domestic product (GDP) and sustains 740,000 jobs – about one in every nine jobs across the province.  Over the past decade, even when other parts of Ontario’s economy experienced a downturn, Ontario’s agri-food sector has registered growth, at an average of about one per cent a year.

Only .5% of the land in Canada is comprised of prime farmland (Class 1) and 50% of that is located in Southern Ontario. But statistics show that in Ontario alone we are losing approximately 350 acres of farmland per day.

To put that into perspective;

• 350 acres of barley can produce 346,791 cases of beer

• 1 acre of land can feed one person for a year

• by the time a child turns one, 130,000 acres of farmland in Ontario will have been lost to development

Support NDACT in protecting our rare and non-renewable prime farmland.   Our politicians need to see that this is an important issue for Ontarians.  Take the Food and Water First pledge http://foodandwaterfirst.com/pledge/

Karren Wallace

Published in the Orangeville Citizen, Feb. 11, 2015

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