Friday, March 9, 2001
Reprinted from: The Promoter, 48 Main St., P.O. Box 535, Bobcaygen, Ontario KOM
1AO
Tel: 1.705.738.6188 Fax: 1.705.738.4187
The Promoter is a moderate sized newspaper serving a readership of approximatley 9000 homes in what used to be Victoria County. The town of Lindsay was the principal population centre until we were made " a city" at the beginning of January 2001.
Heads Up, Farmers
By: John Panter
When bureaucrats and lawyers turn their attention to farm practices, local farmers
should sit up and take notice. Municipal staff want City Council to pass a nutrient
management by-law. For non-farmers, "nutrient" is the polite way of describing
the by-product observed at the Lindsay end of a cow facing Kinmount. Or any other
farm-animal for that matter.
What do lawyers have to do with this? A firm of lawyers have prepared a report on
intensive agriculture which seems to have formed the basis of the staff report which
recommends that a nutrient management committee be struck. (Lawyers are bright fellows and
all that, but they should make a deal with farmers: they won't tell farmers how to farm,
and farmers won't try to defend people in court.)
City Council has taken the necessary steps to get the ball rolling. Council will probably
end up deciding that we need a by-law to keep feed-lots out of the "city."
Probably nobody wants to live next door to 2000 hogs or 1000 beef cattle, if by
next door we mean a relatively small parcel of land. If that's what this is all about,
bring on the by-law.
But let's not cast the net so wide as to drive the family farm out of business just to
prevent a feed-lot from starting up. One way to keep a feed-lot out seems to require (in
the minds of the bureaucrats and lawyers) nutrient management by-laws. In other
words, we won't have to regulate the number of animals a farmer can own if we regulate the
by-product, manure, which the animals produce. Since farm animals and manure go hand in
hand, so to speak, limiting the latter automatically limits the former.
And it could limit the farmer too. If he can't afford to build the manure storage
facilities, or if he can't comply with the regulatory
requirements of the by-law, he will have to give up farming, whether he is operating a
feed-lot or not. What this all boils down to is, how restrictive will the proposed
nutrient management by-law be? If the sample by-law from Perth Township which was
given to Council is any indication, it could be very restrictive indeed.
My guess is that if that by-law was passed for the City of KayEl, not only would there be
no feed-lots, but a lot of our family farm operators would be looking for new careers that
didn't involve animals. Farmers who want to have their say in the proposed by-law should
contact Richard Danziger, the director of strategic and land use planning down at city
hall.
From City Hall
City of Kwartha Lakes
From another article in the same newspaper....
"Sadly, mixed faming is almost extinct in Canada now, and it appears family farms become fewer and fewer as cities and development take over our best agricultural land with large tracts already fallen to the corporate farms as is the case on our prairies where off shore corporations now own our Canadian wheat." |
This we know about, and it is certainly reassuring to know that we are
not the only ones who know what is going on.
Regards,
Wally Dove
<wdove@halhinet.on.ca>
Note: It apears that "Nutrient Management Plans" with
corresponding budgets have been emerging with the new Mega-Cities (urban Ontario) and
Mega-Townships (rural Ontario) which were created in January 2001. This Orwellian
concept of "Nutrient Management Plans" was introduced in the Netherlands in the
early 1980's. Few people in North America are aware of the significant economic damage
that was inflicted on local farming communities in the Netherlands since that time.
Doug Hindson, who is a contributing writer for The Promoter has a perspective on
"Nutrient Management Plans" and an understanding of the agenda these plans are
intended to serve over the longer term.
Persons interested in communicating with Doug Hindson are invited to contact The
Cyberclass Network with such requests.
tom@cyberclass.net