The food that we see neatly stacked in grocery stores comes from hard-working farmers and their fields. One reason why groceries are more expensive this year is worldwide shortages of everyday grains, like corn, wheat and rice. War and bad weather, made more common by climate change, have put global crop harvests and food distribution at risk and will continue to do so.
Ontario’s ability to grow food is an important insurance policy. We shouldn’t be misled in the short term by imports of cheaper food from countries with unsustainable practices. We have good farmland, but some of our best land is in places like the Golden Horseshoe, where much prime agricultural land has disappeared under sprawling cities.
We need to support our farmers and we can do this through the preservation of farmland.
I believe it's time to escalate the fight to preserve prime agricultural land in Ontario.
There is much prime farmland outside the Greenbelt which is still subject to development pressures. At the same time, some farmers are counting on elevated land values for financial security in retirement.
For these reasons, I want Ontario to introduce a farmland easement program, after careful discussions with farmers and other stakeholders, and use financial incentives to retire development rights on prime agricultural land. A farmland easement allows land to be bought and sold as farmland but removes the right to develop for non-farm uses. The farmer receives compensation which is indexed to the difference in the land’s value as farmland and its value as development land. Compensation and the establishment of an easement can make it easier for the next generation of farmers to buy or lease farmland while securing retirement income for the current generation.
Farmland trusts already exist in Ontario and elsewhere. Trusts exist in order to create easements and uphold the contracts. In Pennsylvania, a decades-old program has protected 600,000 acres of farmland over the last 30 years. Easements are a stronger protection than placing land in the Greenbelt because a government of the day could legislate a change in the Greenbelt, whereas an easement is a contract that can be defended in the courts.
To be clear, these programs require sustained funding and effort over decades. Moreover, any easement program must absolutely be twinned with housing and land use policy to increase density, stop urban sprawl and curb economic pressures to develop prime farmland. These are two policy pillars that underlie any plan for a sustainable and prosperous future.
As a leadership candidate for the Ontario Liberal Party, I am committed to a future where we live in communities with more and different neighbours while preserving green spaces.
Ted Hsu is the MPP for Kingston and the Islands and a candidate for leader of the Ontario Liberal Party. The Trillium has invited each of the candidates to submit an op-ed on a topic of their choosing.
