Only provincial election will stop pit

A column (“Farming: A Forester’s Views”) and an editorial (“Discretion can be appropriate”) in your 1 April issue prompt my response.

Doug Skeates’s column criticizes farmers for not caring better for their woodlands. There’s a reason, Mr Skeates, and if you are a farmer you should know it: farmers are too busy trying to make a living in a global world where imports are cheaper than domestic produce. If commercial fertilizers can be bought and distributed more cheaply than manure, guess which a farmer will apply to his crops. If the odd tree gets in the way of more profit, the solution will be clear.

The family farm is uneconomic under current legislation and competition, Mr Skeates, and will disappear in half a century. Then food prices will rise to a more realistic level.

The editorial adopted the same misguided attitude as Mr Skeates’s column: it accepts a tree-cutting bylaw that was amended without any input from those who grow the most trees in the county - the farmers. 97% of Dufferin County trees exist because of farmers who value their contribution to the environment and to farm income, but not one farmer was consulted. Instead, the county decided to try to impede the growth of industrial farming and a huge gravel pit by amending a tree-cutting bylaw!

So now we have a bylaw that manifestly discourages tree planting and sustainable forestry while failing to curtail the plans of a foreign-owned commercial enterprise bent on mining gravel. One must weep with frustration.

Gravel pits are firmly and exclusively controlled by provincial government determined to encourage city growth by making available the means to construct concrete canyons. County bylaws won’t stop that; only a provincial election will do so.

Charles Hooker

Orangeville