We live and farm in a small,…

We live and farm in a small, rural municipality which is growing fast. Our farm properties have already been surrounded by rural housing. There is a plan to build a new hospital and nursing home on land adjacent to ours. We wonder at our age (we're in our sixties) how long farming will be viable in this area. We may have difficulty selling our land for agricultural use only. Land values are already so high that no one can buy land without a severance opportunity for housing to help pay for it. For us, the ship of preserving agricultural land for agriculture has already sailed. Therefore we have to disagree with our professional organizations like DFO and OFA. We want to be able to sell three lots to help finance our retirement or to sell land with a severance opportunity to enable a farmer to buy it for agriculture and help offset the astronomical cost of land.

We don't think there should be a one size fits all policy for agricultural use. Perhaps in areas with large tracts of agricultural land there should be an effort to preserve that, but in areas where the process of building in agricultural areas is already well under way, farmers should be allowed to also sell some of their land for housing.