Fertile farmland is a non…

Fertile farmland is a non-renewable resource. Ontario farmland is at serious risk. The proposed removal of this resource from the Greenbelt will have a significant impact on the ecological and economic well-being of the region and the province. Any farmland should not be removed from the Greenbelt or Oak Ridges Moraine. All efforts should be made by the Ontario government to protect these lands and find ways to protect additional farmlands outside of the Greenbelt that provide agricultural services to the region and the province. Food security and stable agricultural supply chain issues are in the public interest!

“The agri-food sector is one of the largest components of Ontario’s economy. It 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. The industry includes a wide spectrum of businesses—farms and food processing plants, distributors, retailers, and restaurants. Ontario is the largest food and beverage processing jurisdiction in Canada and is among the three largest in North America. The agri-food sector also includes companies making non-food products from agricultural sources, such as bioplastics and biodiesel. Over the past decade, even when other parts of Ontario’s economy experienced a downturn, the province’s agri-food sector experienced growth at an average rate of about one per cent annually. " (quoted from the submitted Environmental Defense link)

Concerns:
• Results from the 2021 Census of Agriculture show that Ontario accounted for over one-quarter (25.5%) of total farms in Canada, while making up 7.7% of total farm area. In 2021, there were 48,346 farms reported in Ontario, down from 49,600 in 2016. The rate of decline (-2.5%) was slightly higher than the national rate (-1.9%). Over the same period, the total farm area in Ontario decreased by 4.7% from the previous census, down to 11.8 million acres in 2021. Ontario is a pivotal contributor to Canadian agriculture second largest contributor to the country’s farm operating revenues.
• At loss of 319 acres/d there will be no farmland left in 100 years.
• Average age of farmers: 56 years
• less than a quarter of the entire farm population is under the age of 35 (Statistics Canada, 2011).
• There is a lack of succession planning
• Farmland is being severely reduced through sprawl, speculative purchasing and fragmentation
• Investments have been made to improve soil quality and those investments are lost because land is being developed
• no effort to inventory or track the loss of agricultural land in Ontario even though Southern Ontario alone has over 50 per cent of Canada’s Class 1 agricultural land
• High cost of farmland - prohibitive for farmers to purchase
• Corporate farming displacing family farms
• GMO’s - countries turning them away eg. India, farmers concerns, pollen drift, cost, other…product labelling
• Overuse of pesticides eg glyphosate. Resistant weeds; results in poor crop yield, Gets into food resulting in disposal of food products eg. honey had to be thrown out due to exceeding food guidelines for glyphosate
• Maintaining productivity of best agricultural land that has been cultivated for decades resulting in soil quality depletion- needs sustainable practises
• reduction in family farmers - incentives needed to attract family farmers
• Benefits farms provide besides food/food security- carbon capture/ climate change, biodiversity, water filtration/purification, wetlands, ecosystems….
• By relying on industrial/corporate farming are we losing conventional, regenerative wisdom