The growth of bedroom communities outside of Winnipeg is not as harmful to agriculture as urban sprawl, according to one land-use planning consultant.
Bruce MacLean, who lives in the bedroom community of Oakbank, Man., said the plague of five-acre lots around Winnipeg’s perimeter is what affects farmers.
This is not as much of a problem northwest of the city around Stonewall as it is to the northeast, said MacLean, a former land resource specialist with Manitoba Agriculture.
“Every road is lined with homes, and they’re building new roads,” he said of the rural municipality of West St. Paul.
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The RM of East St. Paul is almost suburban, he said. Five-acre lots take farmland out of production, and make neighboring farmland more expensive.
In these area, farmers who rent land have no guarantees about their tenure, and have a hard time planning long-term fertility programs. They face restrictions on spraying.
The spread of urban sprawl “almost perpetuates itself,” said MacLean, because farmers don’t want to put up with the hassle.
Acres swallowed
He believes farmers lose more than 1,000 acres of productive farmland each year in the region surrounding Winnipeg.
He bases this estimate on old numbers. He used to track urban sprawl for Manitoba Agriculture, but the department stopped keeping statistics after 1991, he said.
But he doesn’t think the trend has changed.
MacLean was one of the speakers at recent hearings of the provincial government’s Capital Region Review Panel.
This summer, the panel will make recommendations about how the city and its 16 surrounding local governments can work together better on development issues.
The city has lost taxpayers to the outlying areas in the past decade, growing only four percent compared to double-digit growth in neighboring municipalities.
MacLean said he’s worried the review will recommend creating another layer of planning bureaucracy to the area.
But he said the provincial government has had land-use policies in place since the early 1980s, giving it the authority to control development and sprawl.
The government has been reluctant to exercise its authority, he said.
