Opinion: Recognizing our mixed environmental record

The Municipality of Chatham-Kent recently removed a bylaw prohibiting farmers from clear cutting areas of tree cover above a quarter acre in size. Many in the area’s agriculture community have expressed support for the bylaw’s removal. Some pursued its cancellation with the argument that farmers have historically been good stewards of the land.

That argument is only partially true. If farmers, including me and my family, have always been good stewards, a tree-cutting bylaw may never have been enacted in the first place.

The tree-removal issue in Chatham-Kent is complex, with multiple parties at different points feeling ignored, left out of the policy and consultation process, aggrieved by the way the bylaw was interpreted, and so on.

Having covered the issue as a journalist, I can say many of the reactions for and against tree cutting restrictions are quite understandable.

The recently axed Chatham-Kent bylaw was originally adopted to prevent landowners from energetically clearing more land, in anticipation of potential restrictions on tree-felling, under what was soon-to-be-reviewed natural heritage policy.

Such concerns were not without precedent, as the public consultation period prior to the municipality’s adoption of a Natural Heritage Strategy in 2013 and 2014 coincided with a significant spike in woodland clearing – a direct result of landowners trying to get ahead of potential tree-cutting restrictions.

Such a reaction on the part of some landowners to the mere chance of woodland conservation efforts – whether those efforts are poorly conceived or not – highlights a much deeper problem with how many in the agriculture community view land use.

Defaulting to a position of “it’s my land and I should be able do what I want” is the first issue, at least when taken to extremes. It is inherently selfish and fails to acknowledge the fact that landscapes have inherent value to everyone, not just landowners.

Disregarding this fact is short-sighted, makes for terrible public relations, and fosters adversarial relationships with those concerned about the environment, including other farmers.

The second problem highlighted by the bylaw cancelation is a failure to extrapolate historical trends.

The perspective of one prominent Chatham-Kent farmer highlights this unfortunate tendency. In media reports, he argued the bylaw’s cancelation was a positive development, in part because it would allow farmers to clear more land for cultivation, if needed, to meet the province’s food production goals. This conclusion is arrived at by drawing a linear path where less trees equals more food, food being the absolute goal.

Reality is much more complicated. As farmers, our sustainability goals – that is, how we think the sector should look and operate in the decades and centuries to come – need to recognize complexity, as well as what we could lose in the pursuit of singular goals like food production and total sovereignty as farm operators.

The continued loss of biodiversity and natural landscapes is one result of such linear thinking.

Chatham-Kent only has about 3.5 per cent tree cover. The neighbouring county of Essex – my county – has even less. Simultaneously, both areas comprise a significant portion of Canada’s only Carolinian zone – an incredibly diverse ecosystem, but one which has been largely wiped from the landscape due to both historical and contemporary development in agriculture, industry, and housing.

How much more can be squeezed from what was once one of the most diverse ecological zones in the country?

Consider this against Ontario’s current housing development policies.

There is much outrage in the farming community around the Ford government’s multi-faceted efforts to open yet more agricultural land for development. Farmland, so the argument goes, is vital to our food security, and is already being lost by many hundreds of acres per day. Thus, farmland needs to be protected.

Why can’t we apply this same argument to the loss of vital natural ecosystems? Does not doing so with the same level of enthusiasm highlight a double-standard? Is farmland really that much more valuable than the few remaining natural spaces? Would the removal of those few remaining spaces really have a noticeable impact on food production, either in the long or short term?

Where we will be in 20 or 50 years if our default modus operandi continues to be clearing, leveling, and other forms of so-called “land improvements” – a term which itself stems from a time, the Victorian era, where economics and clearing land for food production was the only game in town?

With the benefit of hindsight, will we still only be satisfied when every county looks like my near tree-less part of east Essex? Is that really what we want?

Woods and fence lines are commonly removed for more mundane and tangible business reasons, too. Trees fall when land gets sold and consolidated, for example. I’ve seen this happen many times in my own area, other counties, and other countries. As demographics shift and more farmers retire, die, or otherwise exit the industry, the opportunities for land consolidation increase. The complexities of succession, dividing estates among farming and non-farming children, add another layer of complexity.

“Go big or get out” might not be the business environment in which most farmers want to operate, but the economic realities of that infamous phrase are still with us in many ways. As bigger machinery moves in, and as the personal connection to fields and other landscapes are lost, so too are some of the tenuous, informal safeguards that have helped some of southwestern Ontario’s last remaining patches of woodland hold on.

Unless we kick short-term thinking and find more solutions to manage growing pressures on farm businesses, more formal safeguards will eventually be a necessity. Whether the rules are friendly to farmers depends, in part, on the willingness of the farming community to work with people who do have a stake in what farmers do with their land.

Think of natural spaces as a political resource. When the overwhelming majority of the population, who have nothing to do with farming, vote for measures that curtail farm businesses in favour of pure environmental goals, will we have any practical way to respond?

Perhaps we could leverage remaining woodland as a means of achieving more farm-friendly environmental policies. Resting on our self-proclaimed laurels certainly won’t go too far, and we are a heavily outnumbered voting demographic. One need only look to Europe to see how environmental legislation can result in significant contraction of some farm sectors, and the permanent loss of farm businesses.

A family member once told me a story about clearing a neighbour’s bush from the inside out. The landowner, a grain and vegetable grower, wanted a bit more cultivated land, but knew passers-by would not take kindly to the clear cutting. So, it was done as discreetly as possible. Anyone wanting to kick up a fuss would, by the time they realized what was going on, be too late.

There’s always a tipping point. When the actions of landowners and businesses begin to significantly burden the community, regulations are created. That’s just the way it goes – and rightly so. If we as farmers are going to call ourselves stewards of the land, we need to walk the walk. Historically our reputation is more mixed than we’d like to believe.

And with ever greater pressures in the modern era, I’m convinced we need a drastic change in mindset to avoid further imperiling ourselves.