ONTARIO FARMLAND MUST BE PROTECTED

Ontario's provincial government, not content with aggressively forcing towns and cities to convert designated industrial land into potential housing developments, plans to do the same with prime farmland.

There's a chorus of opposition to a proposed Provincial Planning Statement that would reverse more than two decades of successful effort to protect farmland.

Farmers, represented by the Ontario Federation of Agriculture, also want Premier Doug Ford to back off on a fixation with making housing development the prime focus of all land-use planning in the province.

At the micro level, the latest changes would allow creation of three new one-acre housing lots on a farm property designated as prime agricultural land.

That's a throwback to the pre-2005 era, when severing a lot was common practice. The intention was to allow farmers to retire and build a home on the land they had been working, or stay in their farmhouse and create a new home for a family member who would take over the farm operation.

However, experience showed those arrangements didn't usually last. On average, the new homes were sold again in less than three years, usually to nonfarmers looking to enjoy rural life.

The newcomers often became disenchanted with the agricultural aspect of the country — animals that made noise early in the morning, manure that smelled bad when it was spread as fertilizer, dust and debris from plowing.

Farming, already a difficult way to make a living, became even harder when it meant fighting off nuisance complaints. In addition to the challenges to farming culture, allowing the creation of housing lots could invoke setback regulations that would limit farmers in a 250-acre radius from putting up new barns.

And it would take thousands of acres of farmland out of production, one acre at a time. So much for growing food close to the people who consume it. That's just the micro aspect of farmland loss. The policy statement — which has to go through public hearings before it is presented as legislation — also opens more rural land to scattered subdivision development. That undermines one of the most successful elements of Ontario's Places to Grow strategy, which for the most part restricted larger-scale rural growth to existing built-up areas.

Township politicians aren't saying they don't want new growth. They want to be able to control where it goes, based on local knowledge of what farmland deserves to be protected and where growth can be promoted in the most cost-effective manner.

The Ford government agreed with that approach during its first term in office. The planning statement it adopted in 2020 continued both the ban on severing prime agricultural land and most of the Places to Grow strategy.

Rural governments want to preserve those rules. Farmers, who could see a windfall from the sale of three lots, don't want changes that threaten their lifestyle.

The province needs to listen to them, not the strange siren call of creating housing lots at any price.