Re-printed from Sun Media Thursday April 26, 2007
© 2007 Sun Media
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Loss of farmland 'serious'

By JOHN MINER, SUN MEDIA

If you eat, be worried.

Canada's thin slice of fertile land that can reliably produce crops is disappearing at an increasing rate -- and Ontario is taking the worst hit, losing thousands of acres a year.

For a province with more than half the country's best farmland, the pressures from urban sprawl are ringing more and more alarms.

There's even a risk that with a new greenbelt now designated around the Toronto area, urban growth will punch into prime farmland in the London-Kitchener areas, "the most important land to protect," said Bronwynne Wilton, co-editor of a new book on farmland loss in Canada.

"It is quite serious," says Wilton, a University of Guelph graduate student.

"People have become complacent because it is so easy to go to a grocery store and there is food from all over the world readily available at quite reasonable prices.

"People have become disconnected from the agricultural industry and the food system."

While there are no signs of an immediate food shortage, Wilton warns situations can change, especially in an era of global security concerns and terrorism.

"If you can't grow food within your own region, you are really cutting off your independence. If you pave it over, you are cutting off all your options for the future," she said.

Statistics bear out why agricultural experts are increasingly concerned:

- Canada is the world's second-largest country in land area, yet only 11 per cent of its land is of any agricultural use.

- Only one half of one per cent of Canada's land is so-called Class 1 agricultural land, the best land for producing food.

For land to be productive, it must be in a region with the right combination of a warm growing season and rainfall needed to grow crops.

More than half of Canada's Class 1 land is in Ontario -- and that's the land with that right combination.

But Ontario, especially its southern reaches, is also the province with the most urban pressure on farmland. New housing, big-box commercial developments and industrial growth are among the culprits putting the land under siege.

"Once converted to urban use, it is done as farmland. It is lost," said Wilton.

"It is not so simple as saying we can grow the food further up north where people don't want to live, because the climate is not favourable up there."

The loss of farmland also means consumers will have to rely on their food being transported greater distances, with that extra transportation adding to pollution.

The problem of prime farmland loss can be seen driving along Highway 401 through the Woodstock area, said Paul Mistele, a vice-president of the Ontario Federation of Agriculture.

"When I come down the 401, I see a lot of farmland, some of the best ground in Canada, going under construction. There is steel and there are cranes everywhere," said Mistele, an Elgin County farmer.

While technology and improved plant genetics will make it possible to get larger crops off smaller areas, the question is how far to push the envelope by allowing further loss of farmland, Mistele said.

"They are not making any more (land). We have to work with what we have," he said.

THE NUMBERS

Recent figures from Statistics Canada underline the growing problem of farmland being eaten up by development.

- 8,500 hectares of farmland were lost in Middlesex County between 1996 and 2001, agricultural census figures show. That's more than twice the land area of St. Thomas.

- In the Greater Toronto Area, more than 2,000 farms and 27,500 hectares, about 18 per cent of Ontario's Class 1 farmland -- were lost between 1976 and 1996. That's well over half the land area of London.