About 10,000 acres are held in short-term leases.
Jennifer Jackson
Farmers in rural Ontario continue to face the effects of urban sprawl, as demonstrated with the federal owned farmland in Pickering.
Almost 44 years ago, the federal government released plans for an airport in rural Pickering. Today, close to 10,000 acres of Class 1 farmland are still awaiting plans for this development.
Source: Land Over Landings
“We pave (farmland and water) at our own peril,” says Mary Delaney, chair of Land Over Landings, a group dedicated to lobbying the government to lift its hold on the lands so it can be used for agriculture.
After 44 years of the government studying the need for an airport on the land, it still sits empty. The fields are only being leased out on a yearly basis to cash crop farmers.
Cash cropping is “all they can do,” says Delaney. If short-term leases were lifted, there would be possibility for further economic growth, such as livestock or orchards.
“What’s important is the land and the people it could feed,” says Delaney.
“Southern Ontario’s only permanent natural source of wealth is its farm soil,” says Jim Miller, a livestock farmer adjacent to the federal land and head of research for Land Over Landings.
Miller highlights the importance of the rich farmland, and notes how it cannot be replaced when it is gone.
Land Over Landings will be funding a study to examine the economic potential of agriculture on the airport site.