Canada: Senate looking at ways to save farmland from urban sprawl
Edge planning by cities may offer the best protection for farmland
By Alex Binkley
National Newwatch
Feb 14, 2024
Excerpt:
“There are no easy, right answers when it comes to the intersection of housing and farmland, but we have ignored this problem for too long — much to our detriment.” The Golden Horseshoe area alone lost 28,900 hectares of arable land between 1971 and 2011.
The solution is finding some form of balance between urban and rural areas. “Urban sprawl running up against farmland can have a negative effect on the farming in that region as well. Homeowners and farmers are almost always butting heads in those areas where new developments and farmland run up against one another. New homeowners don’t like the smell. They don’t like the noisy operations or the pesticides being used on crops.
“Farmers, on the other hand, have to deal with trespassers, vandals and people dumping garbage on their land. New roads and suburban comforts fragment farmlands and make transportation more difficult. Businesses like abattoirs are driven out and farmers have to go further and further to access services vital to their operations. All this undermines the viability of the farm and, more often than not, it’s the farmers who ultimately lose in these scenarios and eventually leave the area.”
The answer may lay in what is called edge planning that Deacon’s hometown of Waterloo is a leader in using to prevent conflicts between urban and rural areas. The creation of a permanent edge to the city has invigorated the farm economy outside the buffer area.
