Ontario’s three
general farm organizations – the Ontario Federation of Agriculture, the
Christian Farmers Federation of Ontario and the Ontario branch of the National
Farmers Union – are all calling on the provincial government to freeze urban
boundaries in the Greater Golden Horseshoe.
They are joined
by a dozen other Ontario farm organizations – a record-setting degree of
agreement – in calling for the freeze.
The
organizations count membership from about 52,000 farms and 78,000 farmers.
“The
province needs to impose real boundaries on urban expansion, not more
restrictions on farming,” says Keith Currie, president of the Ontario
Federation of Agriculture (OFA).
“Hard
municipal growth boundaries must be part of the solution to supporting
agriculture in the GGH so we don’t pave over the region’s farmland and displace
more farm families and farming communities,” he said.
The
agriculture groups say that the province’s recently proposed changes to the
Growth Plan for the Greater Golden Horseshoe and Greenbelt Plan fail to protect
the majority of farmers and farmlands in the region from ongoing and
poorly-planned urban sprawl.
They are
concerned that the proposed new policy reinforces and enables status quo
sprawl, making it difficult to see a future for local food and farming in the
region.
“Nothing
is more fundamental to protecting farmland and achieving the goals of the
Growth Plan than freezing urban and rural settlement boundaries,” said CFFO
President Clarence Nywening.
“This
holds municipalities accountable to meeting their growth targets by using urban
lands more efficiently and supporting denser, transit-oriented developments
rather than allowing councils to be passive and complacent about sprawl.”
But when it comes to numbers, there are more city people seeking affordable housing than there are farmers seeking to stop cities from expanding with new subdivisions.
