‘We have to stop messing with farmland’: Ontario Farmland Trust focuses on protecting the best soil as it celebrates 20 years

Farms are essential for many reasons: Farmland is an important part of the ecosystem, it’s needed to grow the food people eat to survive and the sale and export of that food is good for the economy.

These are all parts of the reason why the Ontario Farmland Trust (OFT) was formed 20 years ago. A land trust is a recognized conservation non-profit organization that protects land from being developed or imposed on in the future.

Martin Straathof, the OFT’s executive director, said farmland in southwestern Ontario is “not just the best farmland in Ontario, but some of our best farmland across Canada.”

The OFT has two main areas of work – permanently protecting farmland, and educating and engaging with the community to bring awareness about farmland loss in Ontario.

To date, there are 22 farms in the OFT, adding up to more than 2,500 acres of land 

The OFT works with landowners to help them through the process of putting what’s called a “conservation easement” on their property so that it is protected as a food producing landscape in perpetuity.

According to the OFT, Ontario is losing around 319 acres of farmland a day, and one of the reasons for that is the increasingly high cost of the land.

Being the best in the country, the farmland in southern and southwestern Ontario is also some of the most expensive, and with the cost of real estate as it is, aspiring young farmers can’t afford to purchase property to farm on.