2 weeks Ago By [email protected] (Noor Javed)
When Charles Stevens looks out from his Clarington-area farm, he can see the rows of homes being built less than a kilometre away on what was once prime farmland. Stevens, too, has had his share of developers knocking on his door with lucrative offers for his 164-acre farm called Wilmot Orchard that specializes in growing 11 different types of blueberries and a variety of apples. But to developers, the farm is the ideal location for new housing due to its proximity to Highway 401 right on the edge of the GTA.
The sixth-generation farmer bought the farm in 1976 to establish an apple orchard and blueberry farm, and comes from a long line of dairy farmers who settled in the area in 1810. Stevens said despite the offers, he’s never wanted to sell his property with its Class 1 farmland — considered the best in the country for food production — and he was always looking for a way to thwart the development threat entirely. He found one.
This month, Stevens finalized the process of adding a conservation easement to the title of his land, ensuring that the land and food production continues for perpetuity — or 999 years to be exact. “There’s all kinds of land we can settle on in Ontario and pave over. Why are we paving over the best farmland we have?” said Stevens.
“If we continue the way we are going, we won’t have any farmland left at all,” he said, explaining that his farm’s proximity to Lake Ontario means that tens of thousand years ago, it was likely under water — making the soil exceptionally rich. “My number one reason for doing this was to save this precious land and resource — which is increasingly limited in Canada.” Across Ontario, in the face of development pressures and a growing belief that government is doing little to protect high-quality farmland, an increasing number of farmers are looking for ways to take farmland protection into their own hands through the use of farmland easement agreements added to the title of the land as a way to both protect it and ensure it remains agricultural.
The aim for many farmers is to ensure that the land remains viable for food production for generations to come — especially in light of the tariffs in the U.S.-Canada trade war, supply chain interruptions as seen during the COVID-19 pandemic and climate change.
“In an ideal scenario, we wouldn’t see the farmland loss we are experiencing, and there wouldn’t be a need for conservation easement agreements, ” said Martin Straathof, the executive director with the Ontario Farmland Trust (OFT), an organization whose goal is protecting and preserving local farming and farmland. “But with constantly changing governments who can change policies and enact new regulations, there should be more done to protect our food sources ..
. but isn’t being done.” He said southern Ontario is home to some of the best soil in the country, yet it is also at the epicentre of a deepening housing crisis.
“Some think one solution is to build a bunch of housing on our prime farmland. But that’s essentially trading one basic necessity for another — and it doesn’t put us any further ahead.” Conservation easements are a voluntary legal agreement initiated by the landowner that determines what is permitted on the farm and future uses.
The conditions of the easement are tied to the title of the land, and are monitored by a conservation organization to ensure compliance. In that, easements are different from a will, because they don’t direct ownership, but clarify how the land should be used long after a landowner is gone. Straathof said the Conservation Land Act gives conservation organizations “the authority to hold conservation easements” and use this tool to “protect land for agriculture uses.
” The Trust was started in 2002 by a group of farmers, academics and land use planners. And in 2024, the OFT was incorporated as Canada’s first province-wide agricultural land trust. Over the past 20 years, the trust has protected 26 farms at a rate of “one or two a year.
” But in the past few years, the organization has seen interest and inquiries from farmers “skyrocket,” he said. He said the trust is currently working on 10 conservation easements, and have a list of over 70 landowners “who have reached out to us with an interest in protecting their properties.” Limiting factors in getting through the wait list: the process can take around two years and costs thousands of dollars in legal fees.
Seated on a tractor seasonal worker Callie from Barbados (who has worked with the Stevenses for 20 years), speaks with father and daughter Charles Stevens and Courtney Stevens, on the Stevens’s farm called Wilmot Orchards. Straathof said the farmers’ interest in protecting their farms has increased due to the province’s handling of the land use policy during the ongoing housing crisis. Last term, the government pledged to build 1.
5-million homes by 2031, but historic low housing starts have largely put the goal out of reach. To move things along the government implemented numerous changes to land use planning, many of which had an impact on the protection of farmland. Among them: the increased use of minister’s zoning orders to fast track housing in agricultural zones, easing of regulations around opening up new aggregate pits in rural areas, and pressures to expand urban boundaries — and urban sprawl — across the GTA .
But Straathof said the increased interest also comes down to the fact that 40 per cent of farmers in Ontario are set to retire by 2033, and the majority don’t have a succession plan in place. A conservation easement provides them with a guarantee that their life’s work will continue, he said. It took the Stevens family two years to go through the process of adding the easement to the title of their land.
Stevens said the goal is not to be restrictive but to anticipate all the ways food production could change centuries from now. “We can do anything, such as put a greenhouse on the entire property, as long as it’s used for agricultural food production,” said Stevens, adding that his land is surrounded by the Greenbelt but outside of it. ”What this process does is that it locks your land into the zoning of agriculture.
” And he says while “the Greenbelt is political, this process isn’t.” The province did not respond to questions about whether they have noticed an increase in conservation easements in recent years. Conservation easements have been used in other provinces as well.
Last year, a conservation agreement was established by landowners of the McIntyre Ranch, the Nature Conservancy of Canada and Ducks Unlimited Canada to protect a 55,000-acre ranch in southern Alberta for perpetuity. The easement, believed to be the largest in Canadian history, ensures the grassland will continue as a cattle farm, but it is also home to more than 150 species. Katherine Dean, who was involved in the creation of the Ontario Farmland Trust, said it was inspired by the success of robust farmland trust organizations in the United States.
She said that while protecting farmland can be seen as a noble cause, it can also come at a financial cost to farmers, as agricultural land is often valued less than developable land. Some farmers sell that land to developers to pay for their retirement. However, those who give their land for conservation — either through easements or other donation programs – receive generous tax credits in return.
Dean said that when she sold her Niagara-area farm to local farmers – which had conservation easements on the title of the land – it was for “a considerable value lower than the market price.” Stevens said he made his decision with the blessings of his daughter Courtney, who now runs the operations of the Wilmot Orchard. “I am personally honoured to carry on this family legacy, and to do that we need to have a way to push back against developers physically knocking on our doors and asking if we want to sell our land,” said Courtney.
“We know how good the soil is, and this was the way we could see to best protect it.” She said the family has peace of mind knowing that even if the property is sold down the road, it will always continue as a farm, “Our primary motivation is that farming on this great land will continue. It’s not just about a family legacy.
It’s more than that.”.
