By Suzanne Armstrong
The CFFO is concerned about the vitality of our rural communities. As farms grow bigger, the impact on rural society is becoming more evident. How can land use policy help with keeping a strong rural tax base, good rural infrastructure and services, while also keeping strong family farm businesses, opportunities for new farmers, and successful transition of farms to the next generation of farmers?
Listen here:
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We are posing these questions and others to CFFO members in our 21 districts across the province. Each winter CFFO staff go on the road for our Policy Tour, where we invite local members to come and discuss an important policy issue. Our focus this year is on the impact changes on farms are having to the overall life and vitality of rural communities. Farms today are different than they were in the past. That means that rural communities need to change too.
At CFFO we want to make sure farmers at all stages in their careers, and farmers running all different types of farming businesses, are able to find the land base they need to get started, prosper, expand, or find suitable ways to transition their farming assets into the hands of the next generation of farmers.
Family farms also need a variety of avenues open to them to keep the overall farm income viable to sustain a family living. Things like on farm value added such as cheese making, or processing grains for feed can add jobs to the community, and create more income from the farm business. Secondary enterprises, though not as closely related to the farm, can also add employment and further sources of income for farming families.
Transitioning a farm business from one generation smoothly to the next takes time, and often involves years of families working together. Land regulations on severing a surplus house, or adding a secondary dwelling on a farming property can impact farmers’ ability to sustain two family units working on the same farm.
However, too many severances or secondary dwellings can cause problems for agriculture in the long run. Regulations on land use still need to be strong enough to protect farmland and ordinary farm practices from the implications of minimum distance (MDS) regulations on building or expanding livestock barns, and to keep as much contiguous farmland in farm production as possible.
Different regions and municipalities face different challenges and opportunities. We want your input on keeping rural communities vital! Go to the CFFO website, www.christianfarmers.org, to find the date and time of the local CFFO Policy Tour meeting in your area. We welcome you to come and discuss what keeping your local rural community vital means for you in 2017.
