Food & Water First Letter of the Week!

Megaquarry News October 8 2013
One of our young supporters has pounced on the Food & Water First motion to be tabled at Toronto City Council and written a terrific letter to her councillor. If you live in the city, be inspired to write your own councillors and encourage them to support the motion! Here is an abbreviated version of her letter:

“I am a student at the University of Waterloo currently completing my fourth year in the Environment and Business program. I grew up in the Kingsway with most of my extended family living around the corner, and have always loved the sense of community and safety I find in my neighbourhood.
Councillor Josh Matlow will go before Toronto City Council this week and bring the first motion for Food & Water First, seconded by Councillor Mary-Margaret McMahon. I urge you, Councillor Milczyn, to vote in favour of the Food & Water First motion.  As a student of environmental studies, and as a member of the Toronto community, I believe we have the responsibility to defend our natural resources, especially the agricultural sector.
A coalition of farmers and urban residents, including many Torontonians (myself included), demonstrated the effectiveness of our advocacy by stopping the Melancthon ‘Mega Quarry’, which would have destroyed 2,300 acres of Class 1 farmland and threatened the water table at the headwaters of many local rivers. It is unacceptable that there is even a possibility that these types of threats to the food and water we rely on to live are even discussed and considered. City Council must signal its support for the agricultural sector and call on the Ontario government to adopt a Food and Water First policy to protect Ontario’s Class 1 farmland.
Councllor Milczyn, I hope that the Food and Water First motion has your vote.”

Text of Food and Water First motion, proposed by Councillor Josh Matlow, seconded by Councillor Mary-Margaret McMahon, which is expected to go to Toronto city council this week.
Toronto residents are privileged to live at the centre of a vital agricultural sector that provides us with a diverse basket of goods including the fresh food in our farmers markets, many staples in our supermarkets, and wines in the LCBO. The agricultural sector also supports a large number of workers in Toronto in the food processing and tourism industries, and healthy agricultural lands help to clean our air and water.
Despite these clear benefits to our City and Province, the agricultural sector is currently under threat from urban and industrial developments that consume or degrade the valuable, irreplaceable Class 1 farmland around Toronto. As recipients of these benefits, we have a responsibility to speak up in defence of the agricultural sector. In recent years, a coalition of farmers and urban residents including many Torontonians demonstrated the effectiveness of our advocacy by stopping the Melancthon “Mega Quarry” which would have destroyed 2,300 acres of Class 1 farmland and threatened the water table at the headwaters of many local rivers.
City Council must signal its support for the agricultural sector and call on the Ontario government to adopt a Food and Water First policy to protect Ontario’s Class A farmland.