Food and Water First: Take the Pledge!
AWARE Simcoe April 10 2013
The North Dufferin Agricultural Task Force has launched its Food and Water First website, and the first thing we all can do is go there and take the pledge!
Here’s what it says: I promise to protect Ontario’s prime farmland and source water regions. I will make every effort to preserve the land and water that sustain us now and for future generations. I will put food and water first. Ask your municipal. provincial and federal representatives to take the pledge too.
More information from the website:
The F&W1 Mission: Food and Water First is a movement dedicated to protecting Ontario’s prime farmland and source water regions.
We are rural and urban citizens who understand that our province’s rare agricultural soils and water resources provide us with a great bounty that must be preserved.
Food and Water First evolved from the non-partisan grassroots campaign that stopped the proposed Highland mega quarry on prime farmland in the Melancthon Township, Dufferin County. We are encouraging the Ontario government to adopt a Food and Water First policy so our vital agricultural sector and source water regions are given priority in land-use planning.
Background information extracted from an article by Donna Tranquada, a volunteer in the movement to stop the megaqurry, in Local magazine:
Canada is the second-largest country in the world yet a mere .5 percent of our land mass is comprised of Class 1 farmland, the best soil for food production. More than half of Canada’s Class 1 farmland is in southern Ontario. (96 percent of the farmland Highland wanted to destroy for the mega quarry is Class 1 soil.) According to the Ontario Farmland Trust, the province’s farmland is the single most important agricultural resource in the country. Ontario’s agri-food sector is the largest in Canada, pouring $33-billion a year into the provincial economy and employing nearly 700-thousand people. Yet, according to the Ontario Federation of Agriculture, we are losing farmland at an annual rate of 51,000 hectares (127,000 acres) to non-farm development such as urban sprawl and agregate operations. As for water, Ontario has one-quarter of a million lakes, rivers and streams; fresh groundwater runs beneath its surface. Yet many quarries are allowed to excavate below the water
table and often turn into lakes once the aggregate is extracted.
The proposed Highland mega quarry would have required the pumping of 600-million-litres of groundwater a day in perpetuity in order to keep the mine from flooding. If the application had been approved, this staggering amount of water flowing into five river systems would have been at risk forever.
A Food and Water First policy for Ontario would ensure the best agricultural soils and water resources would take
priority in all land-use planning.
During the month of May, farmers and city residents will participate in a unique “spring planting.” Food and Water First lawn signs will pop up in farmers’ fields and Toronto front yards as rural and urban residents push for land-use policy changes.
“There are people in the world who don’t have food and water,” says Mary Lynne Armstrong. “We in Ontario and Canada must stop destroying our own foodland and water resources.”
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