Priority 03
Defend the muck farmland that feeds the region from development pressure, and back the growers who work it.
Header image: Weathered wooden crates of freshly harvested carrots and onions still carrying dark muck soil
The Holland Marsh is not scenery. It is some of the most productive vegetable-growing soil in Canada, and once it is paved it does not come back.
Provincial policy already recognises the Marsh as a specialty crop area, but policy protection is only as durable as the council prepared to defend it. Boundary adjustments, servicing extensions and one-off exemptions are how protected land gets lost: quietly, a parcel at a time.
Defending farmland also means defending the people who farm it. Growers in and around the Marsh deal with drainage and canal maintenance, road access for heavy equipment, seasonal labour housing, and a regulatory load that a small operation absorbs badly. A councillor who understands that is worth more to them than another statement of support.
This is also an economic argument, not only an environmental one. The Marsh is a working landscape that employs people, supplies processors, and anchors a food economy across the Greater Golden Horseshoe.
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