Losing 319 acres of farmland a day in Ontario should be alarming to everyone, as it is one resource that every single Ontarian relies upon.
Those are the updated statistics from the Census of Agriculture1. While the amount of farmland in Ontario is shrinking, the Ontario Farmland Trust’s (OFT) portfolio of protected properties is expanding with more requests for us to protect farmland coming in from across the province.
Housing is in short supply and financially unattainable for many Ontarians. Locally extracted aggregates are more cost effective and travel less kilometres. Meanwhile, using farmland for development or aggregate extraction is an easy solution to address these needs. This makes farmland loss a wicked problem. But we can no longer take the easy road to solve these problems or we risk losing our communities’ resiliency, food supply and rural cultures.
At OFT we are not saying “no” to development. What we want is to ensure that growth can be tailored around existing municipal boundaries where the infrastructure already exists and can support growth. We want to encourage municipalities to reflect on the impacts of an economic model requiring infinite growth in a world with finite resources. It will take a lot of unique thinking to find solutions to address the needs of Ontarians without losing more farmland, and OFT looks forward to being at the table for those discussions.
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