Ottawa-Canada needs a national conversation involving all levels of government on how to protect the country’s vital farmland while providing sufficient housing for its growing population, says Ontario Senator Marty Deacon.

The conversation is needed to force all levels of government to make the compromises required to preserve valuable farmland, Deacon told the Senate during a debate on an Inquiry by Ontario Senator Rob Black into Canada’s disappearing farmland

Statistics Canada figures there could be 56 million Canadians by 2050, which means a lot more homes will be needed, Deacon said. “All over the country, the urban and the rural are increasingly running up against each other, and this friction often comes at the expense of the farmer.” It is estimated that during the last 20 years, Canada lost the equivalent of seven small farms a day mostly to urban sprawl.

“Reports from Statistics Canada comparing surveys from 1971 to 2011 showed an estimated 642,100 hectares of agricultural land were lost to new settlements around Canada’s largest metropolitan areas. Housing is tremendously important, as we well know, but all too often housing wins over conservation.”

Three of the greatest challenges facing Canada are housing, climate change and food security and cooperation among the three levels of government “is paramount if we are to see it through successfully and not damage valuable and needed agricultural land in Canada.”

New housing is something the current crop of politicians can take credit for because the negative effects of urban sprawl will not be felt until they are no longer in office, Deacon said.

“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.

“Speculation and creeping divestment in farm operations are being reversed as farmers realize they can count on being viable into the indefinite future from generation to generation.”

The Waterloo Region now “is actively pushing back against what they see as forced expansion of an urban boundary that they think perhaps goes too far and undermines a sustainable future that maintains valuable tracts of farmland that can be used to grow food that feeds both Canada and the world.”

Situations like this is why Black’s proposed inquiry is needed to set the stage for meetings of municipal, provincial and federal officials “to chart out a sustainable path for the future, one they will all equally own and be responsible for.” Without that there will be just more of the same which will “lead our limited farmland to ruin.”

This news report was prepared for National Newswatch.