YORKTON - Farmland is an interesting commodity to be sure.
On one hand the farm community sees land as almost a sacred resource for the production of crops and livestock.
But is that the best use of all farmland?
Good question.
Over the years a significant amount of farmland has been lost to urban sprawl for example. As cities grow farmland gets taken over for housing developments, airports, factory sites.
Farmers may not always want to hand over the land, there are processes for municipalities to annex land when required.
And, of course farmland gets strips for the increasingly hard to find gravel pits, and all kinds of right away for power lines, and roadways.
It’s all part of a system whereby progress, or at least what is determined by many to be progress, can move forward. A farmer can’t hold up the expansion of a city by simply saying no.
But, there is also the broader question of who will own farmland.
Should non-Canadians be able to buy up tracts of land? Or, big business conglomerates?
Many would say no, although a farmer seeking out might argue that limiting potential markets impacts their ability to realize the best price – which of course is what they will retire on.
And what about land being sold for non-agricultural production purposes.
There is at present a move toward alternate energy sources, a move which includes large scale windmill and solar panel ‘farms’, and they require land.
So should wheat automatically trump alternate energy uses?
The current Alberta policy states it will no longer allow such projects on Class 1 and 2 land unless they can demonstrate crops and/or livestock can co-exist with them.
So, land growing grain which might be utilized for ethanol production is therefore good, windmills and solar panels is less good, which of course seems a little counter-intuitive.
And, if you follow that thinking, should hemp to make paper, be banned because it isn’t food production?
Certainly we already see where farmers often face barriers to draining wetlands because they are deemed more important than the land would be to produce grain, so agriculture production is hardly paramount.
So perhaps, before limiting energy production options on land, turning it into a shopping mall or airport would be a better line to draw in the sand?
Of course in Alberta where the economy has been highly reliant on the oil and gas sector to drive its economy, it’s hard not to see that connection looming in the shadows of a decision which might make wind and solar panel farmers more difficult to create.
Ultimately though this would seem only the start of a very important debate, what is an acceptable use of farmland in a world which is constantly changing?
