By Peggy Brekveld, President, Ontario Federation of Agriculture

As an organization representing farmers, Ontario Federation of Agriculture (OFA) needs to know both the realities of the current situation as well as look forward to the kind of future we want for our sector and for Ontarians.

Knowledge is critical when you’re taking positions on issues for the farming sector and our rural communities and that’s why we support and invest in research.

Unlike many other agricultural organizations, the research OFA funds, is less about determining the best crop to grow or looking at better ways to feed livestock, and more about processes and issues that play a key role in developing the policy positions we will take to government on behalf of our members.

Much of this research happens behind the scenes so, two years ago, we started hosting Research Day – an event where OFA’s Farm Policy Research Group shares outcomes on the various research initiatives OFA is involved with and presents updates on other key issues the team is working on.

Our 2023 event took place at the end of March and engaged closed to 200 people, including farmers, researchers, consultants, agricultural organizations, government and municipal representatives, and media. Here are some highlights of the day:
Deadstock: An issue the livestock sector grapples with is finding solutions to what the industry calls deadstock – properly handling and disposing of animals that die unexpectedly on the farm. Jennifer MacTavish presented an update on a project she is leading for Livestock Research Innovation Corporation (LRIC) that is taking a new look at the issue from an international and innovation perspective, in hopes of uncovering practical new solutions the Ontario industry might be able to adopt. A final report is to be released soon.

Agri-tourism: Last year OFA partnered with the Ontario Chamber of Commerce (OCC) and the Tourism Industry Association of Ontario (TIAO) on the 2022 State of the Ontario Tourism Industry Report. We also conducted a local food and agritourism survey, and overall, we learned that the Ontario farms engaged in direct-to-consumer sales range in size and scope as well as offer a diverse range of products – and that agritourism is an industry ripe for growth and economic opportunity.

Cyber security: As farm businesses adopt more smart technology and connected systems, they also increase their exposure to cyber security risks. Abbas Yzadinejad of the University of Guelph’s Cyber Science lab explained three common threats:

• data breaches – a system is hacked and information is stolen.
• Phishing – fake messages that look like they are from a trusted entity (like a bank) to trick a user into giving out credit card information or login credentials.
• ransomware – attacks where a system is frozen and held for ransom.

Best practices for farmers to protect themselves include keeping software up to date, using strong passwords that are changed regularly, backing up data, and educating your staff on where threats come from.

Environmental practices: Dr. Michael Drescher from University of Waterloo has been studying environmental best management practices – windbreaks, on-farm forests and buffer strips – and what motivates farmers or hinders farmers from adopting these practices.

He found that over 70% of farmers maintain forests or wooded areas on their farms, 64% have planted windbreaks and just under half maintain riparian buffer strips. Leading motivators for these decisions were their own convictions, social pressures, and government.

Agriculture in northern Ontario: OFA has been a strong advocate for supporting agriculture in northern Ontario and OFA senior farm policy analyst Ben Lefort gave an overview of agriculture’s economic footprint in the north and how that has changed in the last decade.

The number of farms has increased, and the revenue per acre of farmland has almost doubled, with much of the growth coming from field crop production. Funding for tile drainage and land clearing has played a key role in supporting this growth, but northern Ontario also needs infrastructure investments like roads and highspeed internet, as well as more access to farming support services like veterinarians.

Speakers also provided updates on OFA’s slow moving vehicle road safety campaign, mental health research, fertilizer use, and soil health benchmarking in the Greenbelt.

For anyone interested in more information, recordings of all the sessions will be available on our YouTube Webinar channel and shared across our communication platforms in the coming weeks.
​
For more information, contact:
Tyler Brooks
Director of Communications and Stakeholder Relations
Ontario Federation of Agriculture
519-821-8883 ext. 218
[email protected]

By Vanessa Renaud, Director, Ontario Federation of Agriculture

April 22 is Earth Day. It marks the anniversary of the birth of the modern environmental movement and efforts to raise awareness of the need to protect the Earth and its natural resources for future generations.

And while most Canadians are increasingly aware of how important our environment is, there are few people who know our soil, air, and water more intimately than farmers. Afterall, those natural resources are foundational to our livelihoods and our ability to feed people – and we know firsthand how important it is to maintain and nurture them for future generations.

I farm with my family near Maxville, about half an hour north of Cornwall, where we grow field crops. I’m also a Certified Crop Advisor, which means I help farmers with advice and decision-making about the crops that they grow. I work as a crop consultant with many different farmers across our region, so I see first-hand the kind of work that they put into being good environmental stewards, encouraging soil health and protecting water quality.

Preventing soil erosion is driving most of the commonly seen environmental best management practices on farms in my area. Buffer strips, for example, help keep soil and fertilizer out of water courses. Many farmers plant crop mixes that not only have fibrous roots that give structure to the soil, but also serve as excellent pollinator habitats when they’re in bloom.

Cover crops are a popular tool to keep the soil healthy and on the field instead of blowing away. They are secondary crops that are planted after farmers have harvested their main field crops, so that the ground always has a living green cover.

I also see farmers expanding their crop rotation, which means they’re finding other crops to plant in addition to corn and soybeans, such as grain crops like wheat or rye. This helps with keeping soil healthy and fertile. And there is less tillage than there used to be as farmers increasingly move away from plowing and use methods like minimum- or no-till to keep soil disturbance to a minimum and avoid erosion.

The Ontario Federation of Agriculture (OFA) has long been a strong advocate for soil health, land stewardship and environmental programming for farmers. To help develop new environmental policy and program recommendations, OFA recently worked with other farm organizations and Dr. Michael Drescher, an associate professor in the School of Planning at the University of Waterloo, on research to gain better insights into what motivates farmers to adopt environmental best management practices (eBMP) on their farms.

Drescher gave an overview of the study results at the recent OFA research day. His work focused on three practices: windbreaks, farm forests and riparian buffers, which are areas of permanent vegetation between farmland and water courses. All three practices support reducing soil erosion, providing wildlife habitat, and protecting water quality to varying degrees.
He found that over 70% of farmers maintain forests or wooded areas on their farms, 64% have planted windbreaks and just under half maintain riparian buffer strips. Many farmers also rent farmland from other landowners to grow crops, and few reported investing in these practices on land that they don’t own.

As well, farmers closer to urban areas are more likely to rent farmland owned by developers. In fact, for every kilometer closer to a city, the odds of a landlord being a land developer increases by 12% and they generally don’t maintain or even encourage removal of eBMPs, Drescher noted. His study also found that about two-thirds of respondents were driven to adopt these practices of their own conviction. Other motivators were outside pressures, like government encouragement and other farmers in the area adopting similar practices.

The most frequent barrier to adopting all three of these practices is labour, including maintenance, just as regularly managing and cleaning up branches when trees in a windbreak get too big for example. Agriculture in particular struggles with finding enough workers to fill available jobs on-farm.

Finding the funds to implement and maintain farm forests, windbreaks and buffers is also a challenge for some farms, and over 85% of study participants expressed a desire for government programs to help offset at least half of eBMP costs.
​
For more information, contact:
Tyler Brooks
Director of Communications and Stakeholder Relations
Ontario Federation of Agriculture
519-821-8883 ext. 218
[email protected]

By Crispin Colvin, Vice President, Ontario Federation of Agriculture

Canada is in the midst of a housing crisis and different levels of government are introducing various measures to try to ease the pressure. For the federal government, one of those measures is the Underused Housing Tax Act that became law last year.

It is a one percent tax on the value of vacant or underused housing, and the new federal legislation requires that individuals who aren’t Canadian citizens or permanent residents, as well as private corporations and partnerships – which includes farms – who own residential housing to file an Underused Housing Tax return even if they don’t have to pay any tax.

The legislation was designed to address urban homes, condominiums and apartments that have been purchased for investment purposes, often by foreign buyers, and are now unused or not used to their full extent. Farmers don’t play a meaningful role in Canada’s rental housing market, but they’re now forced to deal with the unintended consequences of these new rules.

That’s because many farmers do in fact own more than one residence, but not because they’re keen to be landlords or residential investors. Rather, their interest lies in the land, and they’ve bought additional farmland over the years to expand their business or, for example, make it possible for a son or daughter to become part of the farm.

Much of that farmland often includes a farmhouse and as those older, smaller farms are absorbed into larger ones, farmers inadvertently become the owners of multiple residences. And regardless of whether those homes are subject to the new tax or not, the new legislation requires that farmers must now file a return under the Underused Housing Tax Act.

A separate return has to be filed every year by April 30 for each property a farm corporation owns, and if that return isn’t filed, the penalties are substantial – up to $10,000 or more.

As farmers, we are in the business of farming, not real estate, and although most of us are exempt from paying the actual tax, many may still be unaware of the new legislation, its requirements, and its penalties. The paperwork is onerous and time consuming, and the information available on government websites is not terribly detailed or easy to understand.

That’s why the Ontario Federation of Agriculture (OFA), along with the Canadian Federation of Agriculture and other farm organizations, has been actively advocating for the federal government to exempt farmers from having to file an Underused Housing Tax return.

We’ve been raising awareness and meeting with elected officials and government staff to explain the issue of multiple dwellings in rural areas when farmers buy farmland, and the unintended consequences this legislation now has for the farming community.

Late last month, the federal government announced it is delaying any fees or penalties until October 31, giving affected property owners an extra six months to file their first return under the new act. Although this is a welcome reprieve to give us more time to make sense of the legislation, it doesn’t address the greater long-term impact and burden it places on farm businesses.

Farmers are caught in the middle of governments trying to find housing solutions and the unique realities of farm businesses who unintentionally find themselves with multiple dwellings through the purchase of additional farmland.

OFA and our partner organizations will continue to advocate strongly for a filing exemption for farmers, but while we do, we encourage all farmers to make sure they file their Underused Housing Tax return in order to avoid the substantial penalties, and to contact their accountants with any questions.

There are also resources available on the OFA website, including a webinar we hosted last month in partnership with BDO to give background and answer questions on the issue.
​
For more information, contact:
Tyler Brooks
Director of Communications and Stakeholder Relations
Ontario Federation of Agriculture
519-821-8883 ext. 218
[email protected]

by Sara Wood, Director-at-Large, Ontario Federation of Agriculture

The Ontario Federation of Agriculture (OFA) returned to Queen’s Park recently for its first in-person outreach day since the start of the pandemic. Outreach events are when the OFA board directors and executives spend the day meeting with provincial politicians from all parties and their staff to familiarize them with Ontario agriculture and the issues that matter to farmers and rural communities.

I farm in southwestern Ontario, north of the town of Mitchell, where our family raises broiler chickens and grows corn, wheat, soybeans, and cover crops. This year marked my first in-person outreach event since becoming an OFA director in 2021.

I was impressed by how warmly received we were by elected officials and their staff, as well as their genuine interest in wanting to meet with us and learn about what we do as farmers and food producers.

The day also reiterated for me the importance of connecting with politicians from all parties and particularly about getting to know urban MPPs better. We share common goals and values, and I believe that part of building strong relationships is not just about what we are asking of them, but also trying to get a better understanding of how the agriculture sector can help address their needs and challenges.

Although I’ve only been a director with OFA since 2021, this wasn’t my first time participating in one of the Queen’s Park events. As a younger, newer director with OFA, one of the things I appreciate about the organization is its focus on director development – helping directors learn more about agriculture outside of their own sector or region, giving opportunities to develop new skills, and offering aspiring farm leaders a chance to experience what the organization does in terms of outreach and advocacy.

To that end, the OFA makes a point of inviting local farm leaders to take part in its provincial advocacy days, and I was one of those invitees in 2019 when I had the opportunity to take part in my first Queen’s Park outreach day. It can be a bit intimidating the first time because you don’t know what to expect, but that experience helped me get a better understanding of what OFA does and how advocacy works – and it prepared me to be much more engaged and confident the next time.

This year, the OFA board members and staff were joined at Queen’s Park by six aspiring farm leaders: Daniel Vander Hout from Hamilton-Wentworth, Jordyn Domio from Niagara Region, Andrea McCoy-Naperstkow from Lanark County, Carson Wagner from Oxford County, Derek Brekveld from Thunder Bay, and Charlotte Huitema from Haldimand-Norfolk.

Throughout the day, I was impressed by their knowledge and their passion, and it was great to watch them gain confidence as they participated in both formal and informal meetings. Here are a few of their reflections:
Jordyn grew up on a fruit farm in Niagara Region and now works as a grower at a floral greenhouse. She’s a director with the Niagara Federation of Agriculture and has a strong interest in agricultural policy.

“As a younger member of the ag industry, I feel that it is important to share our ideas and perspectives, and what we want to see out of the industry that we will be a part of for many more years to come,” she says.

Daniel is a fourth-generation farmer who is part of his family’s greenhouse cucumber business and a board member of the Hamilton-Wentworth Federation of Agriculture. He’s deeply passionate about agriculture policy along with being part of efforts to strengthen Ontario’s agriculture sector.

“I am thankful that OFA invited young farmers. Not only has it increased my understanding of our government and how voices in agriculture can make themselves heard, but it has also heightened my appreciation for the OFA and the work they are performing,” he says.

For more information, contact:
Tyler Brooks
Director of Communications and Stakeholder Relations
Ontario Federation of Agriculture
519-821-8883 ext. 218
[email protected]