Michelle Teitsma

This blog is intended to showcase the ongoing study into the impact of the greenbelt on area farmers, grape growers, tender fruit and livestock. Although going into our project we intended to show the postive side of the greenbelt, upon talking to the people who are effected by this act, it seems that there is more to the greenbelt act than we anticipated. One of the main problems the farmers are facing is the inability to be able to sever their property. Since the canneries have all been moved from the area, the mainstay of their income has been disrupted and they have been forced to sell. Some who have tried to keep doing what they love to do, indeed have been doing for generations before now, cannot exist solely on selling to farmers markets. The major markets buy imported goods, that are cheaper to buy and sell, because of cheap labour overseas, and warmer climates that allow for three or four harvests. That is why you are able to buy foods from China so easily as opposed to finding Ontario foods in your local grocery store. However, many of the countries that we import our foods from, like Argentina, do not have regulations for things like pesticides, DDT. We do have regulations, and properly so, but this too, costs the farmer.
Before, when there was an industry for Ontario farmers to sell to, when the canneries were in buisness, the farmers had to deal with the usual problems such as weather, pests and wildlife, to name three. But they had options in order to survive.
The impact of the greenbelt, in that a farmer is no longer able to sever land, is this.....
In the past, if he/she had any agricultural problems, that would set them back a year or more, they had the option of severing some land to sell for profit. They would be able to still function as a farm and weather the storm, so to speak. If they are greenbelt and cannot even do this, then where can they find an income? Then there is the issue of trying to sell their land, forfeit all they worked for, all they wished to pass onto their children, as their forefathers had passed onto them. Land that is under the greenbelt is very hard to sell now, as opposed to land that a buyer will have the opportunity to do with as they wish.
Will we, in the end, have farms that have gone out of buisness, that is now relatively unfarmable. And you cannot build on it? What then?
The idealism of the greenbelt is a nice thought. For nature, for helping to stop urban sprawl. For keeping our lands green. But this is at the cost of our farmers and our farmers rights. In essence if the greenbelt is not altered to consider the rights of our farmers, we will have those fields to walk through, but the people walking through these fields will have fed on imported foods, since growing foods locally will be even harder to produce than before.
And in these uncertain times, especially with the weather patterns changing, if a country that is supplying our foods can no longer supply us, and we have cut off our own channels of food growths, what then?
If the greenbelt is there to protect our foodlands... why are so many farmers going broke? In the 1980's , the government had a pullout program that gave farmers between $4000 to $10,000 per acre. Now, they are being offered between $1500- $1600 per acre.
These are the portraits of the people. These are our farmers. Our grape growers. Our tender fruit farmers. These are the faces of our heros who have worked their fingers to the bone to do what they love, only to have the doors closed in their faces. We cannot turn away from them. The greenbelt will be reviewed in 2015. Be informed, and help our farmers. We are proud of our land, be proud of those who have kept those lands for us, and support them in any way you can.