Saving Farm Land

[cakadu]

This CBC editorial by Elbert van Donkersgoed appeared in the daily Canadian Farm Business Management newsletter:

When Americans want something, they’ll usually try to buy it. That’s long been true in agriculture, even when it comes to things like buying markets for wheat, corn, and other grains.

Now they’re expanding that “buy-it” concept to farmland protection. The 2002 Farm Bill includes nearly $1 billion in new funding for a program that will purchase development rights on farmland to ensure that the land will remain permanently in agriculture. This has become a priority for the U.S.: each year they are losing more than one million acres of farm and ranch land to urban sprawl.

The situation is just as urgent north of the border. Here in Ontario, the 22.4 million acres we used to farm have ratcheted down to 13.5 million. Our best soil with the best climate is in the Greater Toronto Area and we’ve lost just over half of that land.

Farmers and consumers alike want to protect the best farmland.
Agriculture needs only a little more than ten percent of Ontario's land base. There is a lot of room for both farming and urban development, but we need to keep the best soils for agriculture. Only the most productive lands will pay for modern technology.

We have this notion that farm families will protect the land. I've often heard the argument: “Save the farmer and you will save the farmland.” But I’ve yet to see it work in practice.

The difference between farm value and one last crop of houses is just too great – sooner or later, the pressure to give in and take the money can no longer be ignored.

It is just not reasonable to expect farm families to protect the best farmland as long as the market forces are given free reign to decide the future of land uses all around them.

Like the rest of the Farm Bill, the Americans’ “buy-it” approach to
farmland conservation may be a little rich for us. But if society wants orderly urban development and countryside enhancement, it will need to provide a counter to these market forces.

Farmers need partners that will encourage this to happen.

_________

What are your thoughts on this? Here in the county of Red Deer in Central Alberta, they did try to get some motions table regarding the use of farmland, but they've withdrawn them for now in favor of going to people and having a bunch of sessional meetings for input.

How do we balance all of these competing needs?

[rodbradshaw]

Cakadu
One comment that I believe is the key to saving farmland is "If farmers are profitable they will protect their capital namely land". I have seen too many farmers who have succumbed to the easy money of subdividing off and acreage to shore up a shrinking cash flow. The other way is to do like they did in BC and create green zones although this takes away the famers right to deal with their assets the way they see fit.

The traditional rotation of cereals and broadleaf crops can to easily be coverted to a mono culture of Houses.

After having read an article that was published in the Globe and Mail about how they only needed small gardens in an urban setting and that the rest of the food could be grown in the 3rd world to help those farmers. Obviously when we have Canadians expousing theories like this it is no wonder that we do not have any political clout when it comes to sustaining our own natural resources such as arable land.

[cowman]

The BC land bank is a complete example of theft! These landowners have had their orchards locked up for years and years. They are sitting on land that is worth millions and they can't even pay the bills(and by the way this law could very well be overturned this summer by the supreme court)! If agricultural land is so important then the governments should pay the owner to keep it in production! Don't just pass some crooked law to keep the owner from being able to decide what is in his best interests? That is one reason we need property rights in the constitution. Because without that "right" all our other rights are a joke!
In the county I live in(and Rod too) county council recently tried to float their own little "land bank" law. The response convinced them that if they tried it they would all be off the gravy train pretty damned quick! Needless to say they saw the error of their ways and scrapped it as fast as they were able!
Last summer I was talking to a landowner close to Red Deer, who had sub-devided ten acreages. Asking price $80,000/1 acre plots. Sold four just by word of mouth in the first month! Said it sure beat the hell out of growing barley!

[pandiana]

"If farmers are profitable they will protect their capital namely land". The above statement makes perfect sense. Once more, it seems to me the only logical solution to agriculture's dilemma is to extract sufficient compensation for or enterprise to make it viable, including the protection of our land bank.

[ianben]

Here in UK we have srickt planning laws regarding land use and house building.
I could mot say it is sucessful.
House prices are inflated because of shortage of new developments Even bigger difference in
building/agricultural land £250,000/£2,500.
Farm house often worth more than the land to a business man who want to live in the country. We have no real equivilent of your acreages and subsiquently land prices which bear no relation to agriculture.
Land speculators try to guess where new planning will be allowed.
The burocracy is unbelieveable and petty, common sence and compromise unheard of and costs astronomic.
In my opinion both farmer and house buyer loose out and the usual middle men make a killing because eventually location always wins over land quality.

[dalek]

We have the same sort of situation in Ontario Ianben. Profitability of a farm doesn't make much difference when a farmer can sell his farm in the shadow of Toronto and buy 10 times as much land farther from the city and have change left over. We have at least 2 families in this area that sold their farms for development, one in the Whitby area and the other in a big cottage area, then moved here with pockets full of money.