Comment 5385

By Farmer (anonymous) | Posted February 13, 2007 at 14:02:14

This is from the Agricultural Economic and Development Impact Study commissioned by the City last year. It may inform some of you (bigbri54 - it's almost all prime) on how valuable the city's farmland actually is to the economy, the community and to farmers.

"Hamilton is an area with strong agricultural potential. The province, in the Provincial Policy
Statement, defines prime agricultural land as “land that includes specialty crop land and/or Canada
Land Inventory Classes 1, 2 or 3 soils”. Applying this definition, the majority of the 227,000 acres
within the Hamilton boundary qualify as prime agricultural land. Given that only 5% of the Canadian
land mass constitutes prime land, the importance of this Hamilton resource is significant. When other
factors such as climate, proximity to water and access to market and service infrastructure are also
factored in, the agricultural value of the land base in Hamilton becomes even more striking."

Losing this valuable agricultural land to development would be a complete disaster for those of us who are cognizant of the need to secure our ability to feed ourselves sustainably. To those of us who want to continue to make a decent living from producing healthy, sustainable, local food, or to support those who do, the proposal to remove any acreage of this world class soil from food production is unpalatable and we will oppose it. What we need to do is focus on building a stronger, more vibrant rural economy. We need to help make farming more profitable so that we aren't encouraged to convert this invaluable resource into a warehouse. Perhaps some of you should take the time to read the report. You might agree with me.

Permalink | Context

Events Calendar

There are no upcoming events right now.
Why not post one?

Recent Articles

Article Archives

Blog Archives

Site Tools

Feeds