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24-13 - Securing Ontario Conservation Land for Rental to Beef Farmers
A pillar of BFO’s strategic plan focuses on growing Ontario’s beef sector by promoting pasture development through the expansion and improvement of existing community pastures, the creation of new community pastures and by working with conservation authorities and different non-governmental organizations like land trusts and other organizations.
In 2022, BFO worked with Conservation Ontario, which represents all of Ontario’s conservation authorities, to distribute a survey to each conservation authority to understand their process for leasing land for agriculture. Of the 20 responses we received from the 36 conservation authorities, three indicated they do not lease land for agriculture purposes and the process for how the remaining conservation authorities lease land to farmers and the size and number of land parcels available varied greatly.
We recently met with Conservation Ontario to talk about this resolution. Following our discussion, BFO was asked to prepare a letter that could be distributed to each conservation authority regarding opportunities to rent land to beef farmers for grazing purposes. The letter shared with Conservation Ontario has been appended to the PDF version of this response for your awareness. In the letter, we ask interested conservation authorities to contact BFO regarding land that can be rented to beef farmers for pasture use or land that could be developed into pasture. For the conservation authorities who contact BFO about such opportunities, BFO will contact the respective local association regarding next steps.
In addition to conservation authorities, BFO will continue to engage other conservation focused organizations, such as land trusts and other non-profit organizations like Ducks Unlimited to explore other opportunities to promote pasture development and partnerships with beef farmers.
We encourage producers to also engage and build relationships with their local conservation authorities, land trusts or other organizations that may own land for conservation purposes and discuss opportunities to access agriculture land or improve underutilized land for pasture use.