LINDELL BEACH, B.C. – For the first time in Ontario, prime agricultural land has been permanently protected through a farmland conservation easement with the Ontario Farmland Trust (OFT).
Long-time horse enthusiast Deirdre Wright owns Belain Farm in Caledon, part of Ontario’s Greenbelt, 1.8 million acres of sensitive land protected from development.
The 97-acre mixed grain and horse farm includes 40 acres for corn, soybeans and wheat, 22 acres of mature hardwood forest and provincially significant wetlands and 11 acres for grazing.
Since moving to the farm in 1970, she has seen rapid land-use changes in the area including development of enormous aggregate pits that now surround three sides of her property.
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Determined to keep her land permanently agricultural, Wright was the first to commit to an OFT conservation easement.
“It’s terribly important that we preserve our countryside and see that it stays rural,” said Wright. “It’s so disastrous to see it being eaten up by aggregate and all those houses.”
The Ontario Farmland Trust was registered in 2004 as a Canadian not-for-profit organization dedicated to long-term farmland conservation.
An OFT conservation easement tied to the title of the land prevents current and future landowners from altering the property from its natural state and ensures future agricultural use.
The Belain Farm is designated two-thirds natural heritage and one-third protected countryside.
“Basically, she (Wright) has put conditions on the title of her property that it not be subdivided or developed and that it continues as a farm,” said Bruce Mackenzie, OFT executive director. “She can pass it down to her heirs but anyone who buys it must keep it as a farm.”
Wright hopes that others in her area will follow suit to protect their land and some neighbouring land owners have already expressed their support for the OFT initiative.
Under the Canada Land Inventory, only 11 percent of Canada’s land can support agricultural production (Classes 1-5).
Of that, only five percent is free from severe physical limitations (Classes 1-3) and of that only 0.5 percent is considered Class 1, which is land that offers the highest productivity.
Within Class 1, 52 percent exists in Ontario and 18 percent of that is already urbanized with more lost every year. Ontario lost at least 600,000 acres of farmland between 1996 and 2006.
In the Greater Toronto Area, more than 2,000 farms and 150,000 acres of farmland went out of production between 1976 and 1996 and another 50,000 acres stopped producing agricultural products between 1996-2006.
“The (Belain) farm is in the Greenbelt,” said Mackenzie.
“It is similar but different to the Agricultural Land Reserve. But one of the issues in the Greenbelt is that you can have aggregate businesses.”
Ontario’s Greenbelt encompasses the Niagara Escarpment, the Oak Ridges Moraine, Rouge Park, hundreds of rural towns and villages and 7,100 farms.
Mackenzie hopes that interest in farmland trusts will continue to grow.
“We have (now) done two farms,” he said, referring to an easement signed with farm owner Marion Hindmarsh in October, shortly after the Belain Farm announcement in late August. Hindmarsh’s commitment of her 60-year-old 141-acre farm was the first in Huron County.
Mackenzie said that a third agreement will close in late October or early November.
“It’s a great deal for everyone,” he stated.
