Ontario abandons proposal to sever farmland lots in response to farmer opposition

May 31, 2023

TORONTO - Ontario has backed off a housing proposal that farmers say would have had a “catastrophic” impact on farmland and livestock operations.

Municipal Affairs and Housing Minister Steve Clark proposed a series of regulations along with a bill that would allow for more housing to be built beyond urban boundaries and in rural areas, including allowing up to three new lots on parcels of farmland.

But more than a dozen farming organizations, including the National Farmers Union — Ontario, the Ontario Federation of Agriculture, the Beef Farmers of Ontario and the Dairy Farmers of Ontario, issued a joint letter urging the government to abandon the proposal.

Those changes would hamper growth of livestock farming, fragment the agricultural land base, and risk inflating farmland prices, shutting out prospective new farmers, they said.

Premier Doug Ford met late last week with farmers, and the government has decided not to proceed with the lot severance proposal, Clark wrote in a letter to the OFA

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Video: New research chair appointed to accelerate crop variety development

Funded by Sask Wheat, the Wheat Pre-Breeding Chair position was established to enhance cereal research breeding and training activities in the USask Crop Development Centre (CDC) by accelerating variety development through applied genomics and pre-breeding strategies.

“As the research chair, Dr. Valentyna Klymiuk will design and deploy leading-edge strategies and technologies to assess genetic diversity for delivery into new crop varieties that will benefit Saskatchewan producers and the agricultural industry,” said Dr. Angela Bedard-Haughn (PhD), dean of the College of Agriculture and Bioresources at USask. “We are grateful to Sask Wheat for investing in USask research as we work to develop the innovative products that strengthen global food security.”

With a primary focus on wheat, Klymiuk’s research will connect discovery research, gene bank exploration, genomics, and breeding to translate gene discovery into improved varieties for Saskatchewan’s growing conditions.