PC MPP Calls for a Moratorium on Ag Campus Closures

Mar 14, 2014

By Amanda Brodhagen, Farms.com

Leeds-Grenville MPP Steve Clark is putting up a fight to save the University of Guelph’s Kemptville and Alfred agricultural campuses from closing in 2015.

The University of Guelph said on March 12, 2014 that it was planning on shutting down the campuses for financial reasons.

Clark is asking for the Province to intervene, and put a two-year moratorium on the closures.

“We know this Liberal government stepped in two years ago when there was talk of shutting down the New Liskeard Agricultural Research Station and put a two-year moratorium in place,” Clark said in a release.

In 2012, former Minister of Agriculture Ted McKeekin declared a two-year moratorium on closing the New Liskeard Agricultural Research Station. But no formal document was signed.

New Liskeard was previously home to an agricultural college, but was shut down in 1994, due to budgetary pressures. While no agricultural education has been taught there in 20 years, the research station has remained operational.

The two-year stoppage on a future closure on the research station was granted to provide northern stakeholders with time to develop a business plan to keep the station.

“He’s not comparing apples to apples,” said Mark Cripps, Communications Director for Kathleen Wynne Minister of Agriculture and Food. “The New Liskeard situation was a research agreement, and that does in fact fall under the purview of the Ontario Ministry of Agriculture and Food.”

Cripps adds that the programing at Kemptville and Alfred is the responsibility of the University of Guelph, not OMAF.

During the Mike Harris years, the Progressive Conservative’s shifted agricultural education out of OMAF and over to the University of Guelph. That decision was made in 1997.

Video: Evolution of Beef Cattle Farming

The Clear Conversations podcast took to the road for a special episode recorded in Nashville during CattleCon, bringing listeners straight into the heart of the cattle industry. Host Tracy Sellers welcomed rancher Steve Wooten of Beatty Canyon Ranch in Colorado for a wide-ranging discussion that blended family history and sustainability, particularly as it relates to the future of beef production.

Sustainability emerged as a central theme of the conversation, a word that Wooten acknowledges can mean very different things depending on who you ask. For him, sustainability starts with the soil. Healthy soil produces healthy grass, which supports efficient cattle capable of producing year after year with minimal external inputs. It’s an approach that equally considers vegetation, animal efficiency, and long-term profitability.

That philosophy aligned naturally with Wooten’s involvement in the U.S. Roundtable for Sustainable Beef, where he served as a representative for the Colorado Cattlemen’s Association. The roundtable brings together the entire beef supply chain—from producers to retailers—along with universities, NGOs, and allied industries. Its goal is not regulation, Wooten emphasized, but collaboration, shared learning, and continuous improvement.