The Wingham Advance-Times, 1983-04-20, Page 25ershed
ge areas were identified with the aid of aerial
soil Toss entered
ile this seems to
ercentage, the
delivered to the
y, is in the range
Blyth Brook and
e Murray Lamb
ndition of the two
rs to be good.
ns of each basin
igns of poorer
edial measures
sidered in such
STEP
this study will be
summarized and presented to the
Ministry of Agriculture and Food
and the residents of the two sub -
basins. The Authority, hopefully
in conjunction with the Ministry
of Agriculture and Food and the
Ministry of the Environment and
local farm organizations, will
work with the land _owners .-on--
individual conservation pro-
grams in the identified problem
areas of the watersheds. Our
intent is to make the landowner
aware of his problem, what it
means to him financially, and
provide him with cost effective
remedial alternatives.
throughout the two sub -basins for analysis.
Recently the Roman Catholic Church in Prince
Edward Island declared a "Land Sunday" and encour-
aged other Christians to join farmers in their fight to
control the land. The issue sparking the support of the
Catholic Church was the increasing loss of privately
farmed potato land to Cavendish Farms Ltd., a frozen
vegetable processing firm owned by the Irving
organization of New Brunswick.
At almost the same time the Christian Farmers
Federation of Ontario, an organization of private
farmers with Christian but no specific denominational
identification, were petitioning Lorne . Henderson,
Ontario's minister of agriculture and food at that time,
to become an "outspoken defender of the province's
foodland guidelines and to provide a stronger commit-
ment to foodland planning. The Christian farmers, in a
resolution at their annual convention, urged their
members to practise soil conservation on their own
farms and to get involved in .municipal planning to
preserve foodland from other development.
The land, particularly farmland, who owns it and
how it is used, are becoming questions that in-
creasingly concern Canadians. The pressures of ur-
banization and industrial development on prime farm-
land; the economics of continued ownership by
private, resident farmers as opposed to increasing
ownership and control by corporate, absentee and even
foreign concerns ; and the issue of maintaining soil
richness and fertility in view of practices of intensive
farming and heavy reliance on chemical fertilizers, and
pesticides are moving rapidly into the consciousness of
concerned observers.
It is easy to think of a country as vast and as expan-
sive as Canada going on forever. In reality, productive
farmland in Canada is limited, either by climate or by
soils. According to the Canada Land Inventory done
within the last decade by the federal government, only
seven per cent of Canada's land is suitable for the
production of field crops and an additional six per cent
is suitable for pasture. Improved farmland in Canada
occupies about 108 million acres, 70 per cent situated in
the prairie provinces and 16 per cent in Ontario and
Quebec. And although total farmland area in Canada
increased by 35 per cent between 1921 and 1971, it de-
creased by 2.6 per cent during the last five years of that
period. The increases were solely in the prairie
provinces and in British Columbia. During the 1921-71
period farmlands in the Maritime provinces decreased
by 61 per cent and in Ontario and Quebec they de-
creased by 28 per cent.
On closer examination, the figures appear even more
alarming. Land in Canada is categorized in seven
classes, the three top classes being our cultivated land.
Only .05 per cent of Canada's land falls into Class 1, the
top class. Half of this land is in the southern Ontario
peninsula -where' urbane industrial and Transportation
pressures on farmland are greater than almost any-
where else in the country. According to the Ontario
Ministry of the Environment, in the five-year period
between 1966 and 1971, more than 212,000 acres in the
province were converted from rural to urban use. Of
this, half was formerly productive crop land. Prior to a
land freeze instituted by the British Columbia govern-
ment in 1973, farmland in the Fraser and Okanagan
Valleys was being Lost to urban sprawl at the average
of 41 acres per day. The number of acres of Canadian
land used for transportation (highways, powerline
corridors, rail right-of-ways, pipelines) is very close to
the annual crop acreage for all of Manitoba, 10 million
acres.
A crisis is being perceived not only in the high profile
areas of the country — the Niagara fruit belt in On-
tario, the Eastern Townships south of Montreal, the
valleys of the lower mainland in British Columbia —
but also in Prince Edward Island where farmers worry
about farmland going to cottagers, in Manitoba where
farmland north of Winnipeg is being purchased for the
construction of an aluminum smelter, in Saskatchewan
where farmers have recently quarrelled with the pro-
vincial government over expropriation of land for
roads and highways, and in Alberta where oil refin-
eries are being built on some of the province's best
farmland in the Red Deer vicinity.
The pressures on land have come subtly but quickly.
Economics and growth are the most important players
in the game and are the two forces that seem to dictate
rules. Twenty years ago Perth County in south-western
Ontario was a pleasant region of mixed farms, hun-
dred -acre lots on some of the best land in th&country.
The land was rotated between pasture and mixed
cereal crops. Every farm possessed a woodlot, some-
times called a sugarbush. In the past two decades, the
economics of farming have changed and with them the
ven in Cana a It
snit o on forev 'r
a 3
of em g
are finite
e th's resources, not the least
pr..uctive 1 d
s ® s
11/!�r/•,, ii i' v
ONLY 7%—Productive farmland in Canada is
limited, either by climate or by soils. Only 7% of
farming practices in that part of the country. Many
farms have changed from mixed (hay,grain, pasture,
livestock) to monoculture cash crops, usually corn or
soybeans, which almost always necessitate substantial
inputs of commercial fertilizers and pesticides. One
farmer who still keeps beef cattle explained that with
his land now worth well over $1,000 an acre he can no
longer afford to keep very much of it in pasture, He
keeps his cattle in a feedlot and grows corn on what
used to be pastures. A considerable part of the woodlot
acreage has been cleared and placed under cultivation.
And along the highways that run between the towns
and villages, urban sprawl has taken over. On what
used to be farmland, farm machinery dealerships,
lumber yards, motels, country estates, fast food outlets
and car dealers stand shoulder to shoulder like rows of
squatters. Thousand -dollar -an -acre farmland, expens-
ive for a farmer, is still a bargain to an urban business-
man.
Through it all municipal councils have been frus-
trated in their attempts either to zone, to protect farm-
land, or to prevent urban sprawl. Zoning restrictions
that limit subdivisions to 10 acres have meant simply
that at the back of every 'car lot or motel is a strip of
unused wasteland. What's more, with their coffers per-
ennially light, most municipal councils are loath to dis-
courage completely the industrial belt development
that brings in needed tax dollars.
Part of the problems seems to be the deeply in-
grained belief (in North America at least) that there
would always be more than enough land to go around.
Our frontier mythology allowed us to% believe that if or
when we ran out of land, we could just move on west.
Until recently the mythology held firm. The stunned
shock of our realization that all of the earth's re-
sources, not the least of them good productive land, are
finite is perhaps the thing that in the end will most
characterize our era and differentiate us from our
forbears. It makes ours a sort of watershed age after
which things will never again, be quite the same.
Twenty years ago Perth County in Southwestern Ontario was
a pleasant region ,.of mixed farms, hundred acre lots on some
of the best land in the country.
Canada's land is suitable for the production of
field crops.
The statistics about availability and use of farmland
in Canada underline- dramatically the truth about the
myths no longer being operable. Among those things
that we have held sacred have been the rights of
private ownership. That is, a fundamental right of a
freeholder of land to make the decisions, within broad
limits, as to what he or she did with that land. If one
wanted to grow soybeans, that was a right ; if someone
else wanted to build condominiums, that too was a
right. The limits of land mean an increasing cry for
limits on the rights and types of ownership. There are
rising demands for stricter zoning to define types of
use to which land may be put and to specifically
preserve foodlands. Every province in Canada has
been under pressure during the past decade to legislate
restrictions against non-resident, or foreign owners of
land.
Another myth that appears to be deflated is the myth
of scientific delivery of ever greater crop yields. Scien-
tists say that the green revolution, so much a part of
our assumptions in the last 30 years, has peaked, and
that no matter how much fertilizer or pesticides are
added to improve land, the extra production they will
be able to coax out of that land will be minimal. Dr. D.
Fred Bentley, professor emeritus of soil science at the
University of Alberta in Edmonton, has pointed out
that for many crops the productivity increase in the
last few years has been marginal (less than one per
cent per year in the last five years). He says, moreover
that we are nonetheless virtually locked in to our cycle.
Even the maintaining of present productivity is depen-
dent on the continued input of large amounts of fer-
tilizer.
A few crop and soil scientists provide alarming hypo-
theses about the damage intensive farming over the
past century has done to our soils. Some critics say that
in that period there has been a 50 per cent depletion in
the organic matter that was present in our virgin soils.
Some counter that claim with the argument that some
depletion should be expected through use. But the
legitimate question remains as to whether the rate of
depletion is levelling off.
Land and our priorities regarding its use present
complicated and confusing issues for all of us. Far-
mers frequently point out that instead of shortages,
food producers in Canada are often confronted with
surpluses, so much so that they argue that their own
economy and the way of life of their industry is in
jeopardy. One southern Ontario farmer commented
that he found it difficult to come to terms with a short -
Continued on page 8