PRESIDENT'S LETTER SPRING 2010
PRESIDENT’S LETTER
Dear PALS’ Supporter,The recent death of the dedicated fruit land preservationist, Dr. Robert Capps Hoover, (see Tribute on page 2) has left a huge hole in our ranks, but we are not daunted. Inspired by his example, both in the early OMB hearings and later as we persuaded the Provincial Government of the day to work with us (and area fruit farmers, the Region and various Ministries) to develop our vision of an easement program to protect these unique lands in “perpetuity”, we intend to overcome today’s daunting obstacles. These range from a less than adequate and needlessly negative academic paper on easements by Dr. Wayne Caldwell, as reported in our Winter 09/10 newsletter, and the resultant turn-down of their use by then-Minister of Agriculture Leona Dombrowsky, due to Dr. Caldwell’s views and the current economic crisis in Ontario.
Nevertheless, the former NDP Government was in the middle of a serious economic crisis/recession in the early 1990s, and still found $20 million for the long term Tender Fruit Land Program, with a promise of $20 million more if the farmer uptake was good (which at over 60% it certainly was ). And, the current Government has been contemplating expenditures of billions of dollars for such things as nuclear plants over the last few years Therefore, we find it not unreasonable for our Board to spend the next several months developing a visual and written promotional package to help the government see the wisdom of a very long term plan for the purchase of easements from fruit farmers. The costs for easements would be just a drop in the bucket compared with .other government projects, could be phased over many years, and, would be an investment in the future of Niagara farming.
After all, the irreplaceable, minuscule, fruit land acreage of Niagara is the best land in Canada and the fruit grown here unequalled. Unlike the Holland Marsh ( itself considered “specialty crop land and on a flood plain”) and the hundreds of thousands of acres that the Caldwell report compared the fruit lands with, these Niagara lands are under extreme urban threat from a variety of urban uses- and even possible urban expansions should the government change .
Clearly, one cannot move the fruit land to other parts of the region, the province or the country and grow such wonderful fruit- or even to a few other small fruit growing areas where regular deep freezes prevail. Niagara fruit lands are irreplaceable and Bob Hoover’s dedicated work to bring about the use of easements for the “permanent” protection of this land for future generations was well placed. PALS Board members will continue to work towards his dream and we will keep you posted on our work and its hopefully rewarding results.
Val O’Donnell, President2005 /06 BOARD OF DIRECTORS
Joan Ashcroft Brenda Blunt Dorothy Daley Liisa Harju Gracia Janes
Val O'Donnell Ranjeet Sidhu Doug Woodard Barbara Woronowicz
PRESIDENT’S LETTER FALL 2009
Dear PALS Supporter,
Last year, the Ministry of Infrastructure Renewal successfully took Niagara Falls and the Region to the OMB regarding the municipalities plans to sprawl on 500 acres in the rural Willoughby NF, and we are most pleased that our researcher John Bacher has again prodded the Ministry into action. John will develop our case, and with the help of PALS’ member Professor Hugh Gayler, our witness, and member Jean Grandoni, will represent PALS at the OMB hearing.
Provincial involvement in both of these important land use cases shows their intent to ensure that urban growth does not sprawl, but takes place in provincially assigned growth areas and predicated on Provincial population figures. This involvement is a good indicator of the probable outcome of the OMB Hearing, but not necessarily a sure one. And, recent municipal challenges hint strongly that there are troubles on the farms both in and out of the Greenbelt.
Even in Niagara, where incomes are higher than elsewhere in the province, anti-Greenbelt signs have been sprouting up, an elderly farm family is asking St. Catharines to move the urban boundary back to its pre- 1981 location, and while other farmers say this would set a precedent, they don’t disagree that Niagara fruit farmers, who they consider to be “trapped” in the Greenbelt, are in financial difficulty. And, lately we have politicians in at least four Regional municipalities wishing to “break-out” of their boundaries, even tho they are not in the Greenbelt.
All of this speaks to the most important issue for PALS, that is, the need for certainty of the Greenbelt boundaries, to provide a predictable and ongoing land base for fruit growing in “perpetuity” through a long-term Provincial program that invests in farmers if they place restrictive covenants on their fruit land . We have once again been promised a meeting about this key issue - one and a half years after we initiated our drive to convince the Minister of Agriculture of the easement program’s value and a year after Dr. Wayne Caldwell’s report was submitted. We truly hope that our efforts, which are strongly backed by Minister of Transportation Jim Bradley, will succeed and that the Province will not fail the test!
Val O’Donnell
President's Letter Winter 2009
Dear PALS Supporter,
As you may recall, my Fall letter spoke of our hope that Dr. Wayne Caldwell’s long overdue report to the Minister of Agriculture, Food and Rural Affairs, would support a conservation easement program for Niagara tender fruit farmers, like that of the 1995 NDP program, which we worked so hard to make happen . Unfortunately this very brief study barely scratched the surface of its subject! Inexplicably, it compared the minuscule and irreplaceable Niagara fruit lands with hundreds of thousands of acres of class 1-3 lands in Ontario, Quebec, BC and the USA, most of which do not grow tender fruit, and none of which have such optimal climatic advantages. Further, it failed to look at Ontario’s successful Oak Ridges Moraine Trust purchase of easements; talk to any farmers; closely examine the excellent 1992-1995 Niagara Fruitland Program which was developed by 3 government Ministries, PALS, the Region of Niagara planners, and farm groups; or mention Michigan’s successful use of easements and zoning to protect its tender fruit lands. This neglect conveniently avoided dealing with the fact that without the use of restrictive covenants to protect these very special and threatened Niagara fruit lands "in perpetuity”, these difficult economic times for farmers and ongoing development pressures could lead to a complete break-down of land protection policies, should a new, less committed government take the reigns, as happened in 1995/6. The study instead, dwelt on the supposedly miraculous ability of the Greenbelt to proclaim the land as saved forever, being protected as it states, by “the most stringent of agricultural policies on this continent.” The report also came down heavily against the use of “public funds” in the “public good”, as has been so successfully done by the Oak Ridges Moraine Trust, Ontario Heritage and the Bruce Trail. PALS Board members are not discouraged however. We will continue to promote both the Greenbelt and the use of farm easements to protect the best lands in Canada. We have sent a detailed response to the report to the Minister of Agriculture, Food and Rural Affairs, with copies to the Premier and the Ministers of Infrastructure Renewal, Municipal Affairs and Transportation. In the late winter we will present the government with a detailed vision and practical plan to build what we call “The Third Pillar of Greenbelt Protection - the use of easements to preserve the rare and threatened Niagara fruit lands ” - the other two pillars being the Escarpment, which has its own Legislation and Greenbelt protections and the Oak Ridges Moraine, with the same, as well as, significantly, the purchase of conservation easements. We will keep you posted on our progress in the months ahead. We will keep you posted,Val O’Donnell
QUOTABLE S
Position Paper by PALS Researcher Dr. John Bacher re the Need for Easements - 02/09/08“Experience of Lancaster County, Pennsylvania Shows Need For Agricultural Easements.”
“In 1996, the American Farmland Trust recognized Lancaster County’s farmland protection efforts with a national achievement award. According to Bob Wagner of the American Farmland Trust, Lancaster County is setting the pace for farmland preservation in the United States.” Like Niagara is within Canada, Lancaster County is one of the most productive farming regions in the United States. Daniel notes that, “It is the leading agricultural county not only in Pennsylvania but in the entire Northeast, with over $680 million a year in farm goods sold. It is also the nation’s number one non- irrigated farming country.”
“Another similarity between Lancaster County and Niagara, whose populations are almost identical , is that its excellent farmland is under intense development pressure from sprawl since it lies only sixty miles west of Philadelphia, which is the fourth largest city in the United States. Every year, Daniel warns, its “suburbs creep closer.”
“In the past, Lancaster county appeared to be doomed to the bulldozer. This is a situation described in the book, Garden Spot, by David J. Walbert, where he notes that, “In the early 1990s Lancaster County seemed to be hopelessly divided. On the one side businessmen and progressives insisted on the necessity and indeed the inevitably of growth...As Tom Daniels later recalled when he arrived in Lancaster in 1989, every acre seemed for sale....and yet, after 1990, the road to farmland preservation grew markedly easier...Farmers who had thought preservation a nice idea but impractical... including Larry Weaver, who had told the New Era in 1968 that farming was on the way out”, had a different attitude.” Walbert asks, “What made the difference?”
“The answer is simple - conservation easements! These are now so desirable that there is a seven year waiting list to sell them to either the Lancaster County Preserve Board, or the Lancaster Farmland Trust, both largely funded through the State of Pennsylvania. The program Daniels stresses, “has softened opposition to agricultural zoning.”
As in Niagara and its Greenbelt’s permanent boundaries, in Lancaster County, easements are purchased “within the contiguous agriculture security zones to maintain a critical mass of farmland that would enable farm support businesses to thrive.” Such strategic locations serve “as keystones to keep agricultural infrastructure viable.”
Also, like the points system of the doomed 1994-95 Niagara Tender Fruit Lands Program, the Lancaster Farmland Trust , as its website notes, “has made preserving farms that are adjacent to or within one mile of an urban growth area a priority. By doing so, the Trust can assure that development is contained within these urban growth areas”
The Amish farm in the movie “Witness” is one of the preserved farms in Lancaster County protected under its easement program. When you view this drama, full of heroic efforts to overcome development pressures, you may appreciate some of the struggle PALS has been going through in the past several years to obtain a conservation easement program for Niagara.”