Change would gut official plans

The province has posted its plans to prevent people, including municipalities, from appealing official plan changes when the Minister of Municipal Affairs and Housing has referred the issue to the Ontario Land Tribunal.

The provincial cabinet appoints the members of the Ontario Land Tribunal which has also vetoed a number of municipal government decisions after developers have filed appeals. 

This recent change is up for public comment. It is posted on the province’s regulatory registry.

Good luck if a developer persuades the Minister of Municipal Affairs and Housing that it wants to change your farm from agriculture to residential development in your local official plan.

P+H closing Owen Sound terminal

 

Parrish and Heimbecker (P+H) plans to close its grain elevator in Owen Sound on Dec. 18.

"The decision is part of P&H's ongoing evaluation of its grain network and long-term infrastructure needs as we continue to align our operations and investments with the future needs of the business and the customers we serve," Monika Robertson, P&H marketing manager, said in an email to the Owen Sound Sun Times.

Robertson said they have made no decisions regarding the future of the site and the iconic grain elevator buildings after P&H shuts down operations.

Locally, crop farmers use the Owen Sound terminal as an outlet when capacity at inland elevators becomes limited.

Some tariff relief

 

United States President Donald Trump has removed some tariffs he placed on Canadian products this fall.

They are:

·      Industrial machinery, plant or equipment for the treatment of materials, by process involving a change in temperature.

·      Packing or wrapping machinery.

·      Refrigerating or freezing equipment.

·      Machines for cleaning, sorting or grading food items.

·      Machinery for filling, closing, sealing, capsuling or labeling bottles, cans, boxes or other containers.

·      Plywood not over 6mm thick.

·      Sacks and bags.

·      Nonadhesive plates, sheets, film, foil and strip.

·      Bleached paper and paperboard, coated, impregnated or covered with plastics.

·      Cartons, boxes and cases of corrugated paper or paperboard.

Susan Collins, the Republican senator from Maine who is in the midst of a tight reelection campaign, issued a press release taking credit for the tariff changes.

NFU supports food hubs

 

The National Farmers Union has come out in favour of new food hubs but said the federal government’s promise of $432 million spread among dozens of pilot projects would be a mistake because they would collapse after the subsidies end.

Instead what is needed is well-funded hubs that include food-processing ventures with support from local farmers and run as locally-controlled co-operatives, it said.

It should not be food hubs run by large established companies such as Sysco and Gordon’s Food Services, the NFU said.

It also noted that the promise of a Food Link Fund with $1 billion pales when compared with the profits of Canada’s biggest supermarket chains.

Food hubs could provide the missing link between regional farms and institutions—such as prisons, schools, hospitals and universities, it said.

Mandating that publicly-funded programs—like the National School Food Program—purchase a fixed proportion of their food from local hubs would create a stable demand for farmer goods.

“The NFU maintains that new food hubs should be publicly owned, co-operatively owned, or farmer owned-and-operated,” it said.

It pointed to the Summerland Food Hub in British Columbia as an example that will operate as a partnership between a non-profit producer cooperative (the LocalMotive Farmers Network Cooperative) and a non-profit processing organization (the Okanagan Food and Innovation Centre).

Ontario idea wins international award

An idea that started in a field in Merlin, Ont. has won the Ig Nobel prize in Switzerland. It is awarded to science that makes a person laugh, then think.

The idea came from Anne Verhallen who was working for the Ontario Ministry of Agriculture and Food at the time. She thought burying cotton would measure microbial activity, so the trial was to bury cotton in two fields, one that was conventionally farmed, the other that had cover crops and no till management.\

And the cotton she chose was men’s underwear briefs, prompting farmer Woody Van Arkel to call it the “soil your undies” project.

Two months after they were buried, the one in the conventionally-farmed field was fine, the one in the no-till, cover-crop field was decomposed.

And that became an easy way for farmers to get a measure of their soil health.

The 2026 Ig Nobel soil science award was presented recently in Zurich, Switzerland, to Franz Bender, Marcel van der Heijden, Atlant Bieri and Pia Viviani, for burying 1,000 identical pairs of underpants across Switzerland, then digging them up after two months to measure decomposition, and by extension, the level of soil microbial activity. 

Nine hundred soil samples from the burial sites were also collected.

As detailed by Bender and van der Heijden, the citizen-science project helped “collect a unique dataset,” and provided “the opportunity to advocate for soil conservation in Switzerland and beyond.”

Their research was simply a larger number of fields and briefs than the first triial 11 years earlier in Chatham-Kent.

Grain farmers seek diesel price relief

Grain Growers of Canada asked the federal government for a 50-cents per litre diesel subsidy 18 days before United States President Donald Trump announced a $8-billion diesel subsidy for farmers.

Grain Growers said in its letter to federal finance minister Francois-Philippe Champagne that it wants immediate help, but failing that, help when Champagne tables his budget Nov.8. 

“This is just highlighting that other countries are recognizing it as an issue as well,” said Kate Sauser, executive director of Grain Growers.

Grain Growers calculated that a Class 8 combine consuming 70 litres of diesel per hour, seven days a week over 30 harvest days, would use 16,800 litres of fuel.

“This calculation excludes fuel used by grain carts, trucks and other equipment supporting harvest,” Grain Growers stated in its letter.

At the proposed rebate of 50 cents per litre would be $8,400 for that one combine.

Farm Credit Canada estimates that a 5,000-acre farm in Saskatchewan

is experiencing an increase in its fuel bill of between $68,000 and $106,000 in 2026, not including the increase in trucking costs and rail freight.

                  

Conagra plans to leave Dresden tomato plant

Conagra is planning to either sell or close its tomato plant in Dresden. It said it is in discussions with Highbury Canco of Leamington.

Highbury Canco emerged when Heinz closed its tomato-processing plant.

The plant in Dresden has been in business since 1947.

Conagra didn't explain why it plans to leave the area, only that its decision was made after a careful review.

Steve Pinsonneault, the provincial member of the legislature for Lambton-Kent-Middlesex, said “the potential closure of the Conagra tomato processing facility in Dresden would have a significant impact on the local community and surrounding agricultural sector. I understand the potential consequences extend well beyond the facility itself. Local tomato growers, employees, suppliers, and other businesses all have a stake in its future, and the effects would be felt throughout the community." 

In 2022 Conagra said it employed 175 workers at the plant full time and roughly 225 seasonally.