A farewell to farms
Friday, November 16th, 2007
When even a relatively successful operator has had it, you know Ontario agriculture is in big trouble
There’s something new growing in Bert Andrews’ field, in front of the patch of long-wilted rhubarb and the wispy, overgrown asparagus.
“For Sale/Lease, By Owner” reads the giant white sign, “Growing Farm Business, Winery and Farm Property. ”
After 27 seasons, Andrews’ Scenic Acre, on the outskirts of Milton, is going the way most farms in the area have gone – out of business.
Not because it hasn’t been profitable – this past season has been Andrews’ best to date. But he had open-heart surgery last year, and none of his children wants to take over the operation.
“I’m 64 years old – I want my Sundays off,” Andrews says on a warm fall afternoon, looking out at his fields and the russet-coloured Niagara Escarpment in the distance. The heads of his towering Russian sunflowers have long turned black and now curl downward. The last of his pumpkins have been sold. And the haystack, which visiting schoolchildren jumped on until last week, will soon be dismantled – perhaps for the last time.
It’s the end of an era, not just for Andrews, but also for agriculture in the Toronto area.This is the best farmland in the country. But we’re quickly paving it over. The Greater Toronto Area – including Durham, Halton, Peel and York regions – lost 16 per cent of its farms between 1996 and 2001. Since then, another five per cent have disappeared.
There’s a sign nailed beside the door of Andrews’ barn that reads: “Farmers Feed Cities.” It should say: “Cities Eat Farms.”
Up to 80 per cent of the produce we buy travels thousands of kilometres by truck or plane. Even apples – which are quintessentially Ontarian and can keep in cold storage for months – travel 5,900 kilometres on average to get to us, according to a recent Region of Waterloo Health study.
Contrary to what one might think given how much of our food is imported, Canadians spend less of their disposable income on nourishment – about 10 per cent on food and non-alcoholic beverages, according to the OECD – than residents of most other developed countries. A related fact: domestic farmers make less than half of what Toronto garbage collectors earn. (The average farm earns less than $25,000 a year before expenses, according to the latest census report.)
The profession’s self-esteem is in the gutter. As Andrews regularly points out, Ontario agriculture minister was once a plum posting. Now, it’s an afterthought, rarely noted in reports about cabinet shuffles, because it’s no longer considered a powerful portfolio, even though it’s the only ministry that touches all of us many times daily.
Faced with a future of long hours, little respect and less pay, is it surprising that young farmers are leaving the land in droves?
Despite the growing local food movement, most farmers and food policy wonks agree: the future of Ontario farming is bleak. Most predict it will take a horrific event like 9/11 to wake us up to the dangers of relying entirely on foreign food.
“I have a three-month-old granddaughter, and I don’t want her to be hungry in her lifetime,” says Mike Shook, program manager with FarmStart, a Guelph-area non-profit aiming to get more farmers on the land. “If we keep in the direction we are, I fear she will be.”
Many urge the government to take action before it’s too late. The Greenbelt – which protects 720,000 hectares of land circling Toronto from development– is a start, they say. But protecting land is one thing; ensuring that food grows on it is another. Horse farms are the second fastest-growing agricultural category in the Toronto area, after cash crops like winter wheat, according to the last census.
“We need a master plan,” says Andrews.
He remains among the small minority of optimists. How else would he have survived almost three decades of farming near Milton, the fastest growing municipality in the country, as subdivisions and golf ranges replaced the fields he once ploughed?
The ultimate proof: he hopes to sell his property to a farmer.
“There are people who think I don’t have a hope in hell,” he chuckles. “But I’ve been hearing that all my life.”
To an outsider, Andrews’ Scenic Acres seems one of the most successful farms around. The 39-hectare property bursts with blackberries, pumpkins, strawberries … as well as 17,000 bottles of fruit wine a year. Andrews runs a bustling market out of one of his barns and sends his produce out to eight farmers’ markets every week.
More than 15,000 school children tour his farm each summer. And far more than that come out, mostly on weekends, to pet his goats and ride a tractor out to the fields to pick their own food. One Sunday this fall, a record 3,300 people swarmed the farm to pick pumpkins. For many city slickers, such “entertainment farms” have become their only connection to rural life.
No matter how successful and cherished Andrews’ Scenic Acres may be, is it realistic to think a farmer will buy it when speculators are scooping up property all around Andrews? Nearby farmland inside the Greenbelt is going for $20,000 an acre – a price most farmers could never afford. Farms like his that fall outside the Greenbelt border are running at $50,000 an acre. Which means only a Rosedale stockbroker would have the necessary cash.
That’s exactly who Andrews is banking on – “It would have to be somebody who had passion.”
Wayne Roberts, project co-ordinator for the Toronto Food Policy Council, has a different buyer in mind: the Ontario government. “That’s obvious to anyone concerned with the future of food security in Ontario,” he says. Not only would the province save the most productive land from being stripped of its topsoil and converted to homes and malls, but it could also boost aspiring farmers into the business by renting out small acreages to them at affordable prices – he calls them “farm condominiums.”
“Once land is changed from agriculture into something else,” he says, “it’s almost impossible to reclaim. If this farm goes, it’s not late – it’s too late.”
By Catherine Porter, Environment Reporter for the Toronto Star
