Ontario farmers grow to appreciate the Greenbelt
Here’s something you would never have heard 10 years ago.
Ella Haley and her husband, Richard Tunstall, want their 67-acre organic farm in Brant County to be included in the Greenbelt. That’s right: They want the Greenbelt to expand by a half field and incorporate their farm.
That way, they say, it will remain farmland and not sprout subdivisions, which are already being planned nearby.
“We are the release valve. Land banks are buying all the land around us, and it’s dividing the community,” says Haley, who grew up grading chicken eggs before school as the child of third-generation farmers.
“We wouldn’t have this happening if we weren’t left out of the Greenbelt. That line suddenly changed our lives.”
Haley and Tunstall are extreme examples of the shift of position among Ontario farmers regarding the Greenbelt.
Ten years ago, when the Greenbelt was created, the Ontario Federation of Agriculture’s then vice-president, Paul Mistele, called it the most “draconian legislation” farmers in the province had ever faced.
Farmland, after all, makes up almost half — 43 per cent — of the Greenbelt. Those farmers would lose their rich retirements, since they could no longer sell to spendhappy developers. Worse: they’d be restricted in their jobs by “nonscientific legislation.”
Current OFA vice-president Keith Currie takes a very different position today: “The Greenbelt is doing essentially what it planned to do — curbing development — and it hasn’t really affected the day-to-day activities of farmers.”
In fact, it has even benefited farmers!
“It’s provided opportunity for people to continue to farm,” Currie says. “It’s allowed farmers to buy more land at affordable prices.”
As for the farmers who lost their hefty retirement funds?
“I sympathize with individuals who lost that opportunity, but I can’t defend it,” he says. “I’m here to make agriculture as strong as it’s ever been, to preserve as much land as I can. You can only grow one crop of houses.”
That, my friends, is a glowing review from a farmer, and particularly one representing 37,000 other farmers across the province, including the 5,500 in the Greenbelt. How times have changed. The growing local food movement has a lot to do with that. It has offered farmers a chance of survival in today’s globalized market. The Ontario government, to its credit, has helped build the movement, by flowing millions of dollars in grants through the Friends of the Greenbelt Foundation and its Greenbelt Fund. Together, they’ve scored some big successes:
Giant food and product distributor Sysco Ontario committed to buying $5 million in local cheese, according to the Greenbelt Fund’s vice-president, Kathy Macpherson.
Toronto city hall passed a local food procurement policy, which had doubled Ontario food in city-run child-care centres by 2011.
The Durham District School Board announced last fall it would purchase all apples and five vegetables for its school cafeterias from Ontario growers.
The number of local farmers markets has more than doubled to 112.
Ontario Fresh, an online Lavalife for farmers looking to sell their produce, now claims 2,430 registered businesses looking to buy local food.
All this is great. But, it’s still not enough. Since the creation of the Greenbelt, the number of farms inside it has shrunk by 11 per cent. The biggest drop was in animal farms, particularly hogs and beef cows, which are too smelly for urban sensibilities. But the bulk of Greenbelt farm acreage is devoted to growing field crops — grains and oilseeds — which you don’t see much of at farmers markets.
Even the fruit and vegetable farms are shrinking in the Greenbelt, and they are the ones with the most to gain.
The point is: It is still very hard to make a good living as a family farmer in Ontario.
Haley and Tunstall are perfect examples. They’ve taken full advantage of the local food movement, selling their vegetables and herbs at markets and to Toronto restaurateurs through local food distributor 100km Foods Inc. However, the farm only makes 10 per cent of the couple’s income, Tunstall says. He works as a naturopath on the side, and Haley is a sociology professor.
“It’s a struggle,” he says when I meet him in the Arcadian Court on the Bay’s eighth floor for a farmer-buyer meet-and-greet this week. “We have to find niches and be innovative.”
I meet Ted Eng at the same event. He’s the owner of Zephyr Organics, all 150 acres of which are located firmly in the Greenbelt near Uxbridge. He is also the outgoing chair of the Greater Toronto Area Agricultural Action Committee.
He considers the Greenbelt a “recreation plan” for city slickers.
When I ask him what the government should have done 10 years ago, his answer is very telling.
“Why didn’t they do it for the whole province?” he says. “A real politician would have saved all Class 1, 2 and 3 farmland.”
Greenbelt battle lines drawn, IN1