The Rural Voice, 1989-07, Page 3general manager/editor: Jim Fitzgerald
editorial advisory committee:
Bev Hill, fanner, Huron County
John Heard, soils and crops extension
and research, northwestern Ontario
Neil McCutcheon, farmer, Grey County
Diane O'Shea, farmer, Middlesex Cty.
George Penfold, associate professor,
University of Guelph
Gerald Poechman, farmer, Bruce Cty.
Bob Stephen, farmer, Perth County
contributing writers:
Adrian Vos, Gisele Ireland, Keith
Roulston, Cathy Laird, Wayne Kelly,
Sarah Borowski, Mary Lou Weiser -
Hamilton, June Flath, Ian Wylie-Toal,
Susan Glover, Bob Reid, Mervyn Erb,
Peter Baltensperger, Darene Yavorsky,
Sandra Orr, Yvonne Reynolds
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Gerry Fortune
production co-ordinator:
Tracey Rising
advertising & editorial production:
Rhea Hamilton -Seeger
Anne Harrison
Brenda Baltensperger
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BEHIND THE SCENES
by Jim Fitzgerald
general manager/editor
Like a recurring bad dream that
keeps recycling itself over and over
again, the decades old argument about
preserving farmland versus the rights
of private property ownership has sur-
faced again. The new Ontario govern-
ment, with the whole -hearted support
of the minister of agriculture, has
resurrected old ideas on preserving
prime agricultural farmland, that have
caused so many headaches to previous
governments.
Press reports have surfaced that
Agricultural Minister Buchanan has
formed an alliance with three powerful
cabinet members — Environment
Minister Ruth Grier, Transport
Minister Ed Philip and Municipal
Affairs Minister David Cooke — to
take a hard stand against paving over
more farmland in the province.
The same old arguments are used
to justify the tightening of restrictions
on using farmland for houses and fac-
tories, and, on the surface, they are
honourable ones. Yes, it's true, they're
not making any more farmland, and
with the population of the world
growing at the astounding rate of 90
million a year (that's three new
mouths a second to feed) somewhere
down the road we will eventually need
every square inch of soil just to feed
ourselves, let alone grow a surplus to
export to other needy parts of the
world.
The important question is: who
should take responsibility for saving
food producing land for the next gen-
eration? Should the farmer be forced
by planning and zoning rules to farm it
forever, or until it's needed for devel-
opment, which impedes his ability to
use his land as a retirement fund? Or,
if preserving farmland is for the ben-
efit of society as a whole, then should
society take over stewardship of the
land, pay farmers what it's worth, and
lease it back, or perhaps even pay
them to farm it? Until that basic
question is answered satisfactorily, no
clear foodland preservation policy can
ever be established.
This is where ideology clashes
with reality, particularly to a farmer
faced with operating in our present
dog-eat-dog economic system.
Farmers already operating on thin
margins will get little sympathy from
bankers and suppliers when they try to
pay their bills with promises that
they're preserving farmland for future
generations. To other farmers, their
farm represents their retirement fund,
built up over a lifetime of hard work
scrimping and saving. Removing their
right to sell to the highest bidder is a
challenge to some basic democratic
rights to own property. To the
urbanite idealists sitting pretty in their
$300,000 homes, it looks very clear:
stop paving farmland immediately and
ensure its use for food production in
an increasingly hungry world.
But it's not enough to trot out a
new foodland preservation policy to
satisfy the city yuppies, even though
they do carry tremendous weight in
the Ontario Legislature. All it will do
is force farmers further into the hole,
leading them into a life of poverty. It
will likely speed up their exodus from
the land, and leave us even more de-
pendent on imported food.
There seems to be no middle
ground in this debate, it's either black
or white, like so many other issues
facing agriculture today. Most
farmers (now a tiny minority) are
lined up on one side, and the rest of
society lined up on the other.
It's definitely not an issue to be
used as a political football, to gain
votes. Either fish or cut bait on this
one. Farmers should not be singled
out as the one group in society to lose
their rights without compensation.0