7

Volume

AGRICULTURE BUSINESS COMMUNITY

Chapters: Perth East, Perth South & Wilmot West

Community
Report
 AGRI CU L TU RE BU S I NE SS COM MU NI T Y

Submitted to the Ministry of Transportation and AECOM for

the response period ending March 25, 2011.

 Agriculture Business Community

c/o 3649 Road 107, R.R. # 2
Tavistock, ON N0B 2R0
Phone 519.655.2613 • Fax 519.273.6367
Email hwy7and8@gmail.com
A G R I C U L T U R E B U S I N E S S C O M M U N I T Y

Table of Contents

1. Introduction

2. A Retrospective

3. The Goals of ABC

4. The Two Main Issues

5. Mapping the Business of Agriculture

6. The Tyranny of Incremental Decision Making

7. ABC’s Recommendations to MTO and all Municipal Councils

8. Conclusion

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Introduction

The following represents the views and recommendations of the

Agricultural Business Communities of Perth East, Perth South and
Wilmot West regarding Public Information Centre (PIC) 4.

T he purpose of this document is to highlight concerns raised by members of the Agriculture

Business Community regarding the most recent proposal for a Highway 7 & 8 route as
presented by AECOM and the Ministry of Transportation (MTO) in January 2011. In the interests
of brevity, the consultants and MTO should note that many issues previously identified by the
Agriculture Business Community (ABC) regarding matters like drainage, cultural heritage, business
compensation, as well as mitigation, will not be repeated here as they are already well argued in
previous briefs.

At this late stage in the overall planning process we focus on two core issues:

a) the total amount of land being proposed to be removed from farm production by the currently
selected route; and,

b) the potential restriction of access to parcels of land within existing integrated farm business units
if the current proposal is selected.

Four summary recommendations are provided addressed to both the project team and municipal
councils.

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2
Chapter

A Retrospective

The past 6 volumes from the Agriculture Business Community (ABC) have
documented huge amounts of data.

T he original Request for Proposals (RFP) for this project is dated November 17, 2006.
Four years have passed since a contract was issued to the consultants in February 2007 for
the highway 7/8 Class EA study.

What has been accomplished?

a) The originally selected consulting firm and their sub- consultants have been absorbed into
an even bigger firm.

b) Numerous phase extensions and delays including extra Public Information Centre’s (PIC’s)
have been invoked to satisfy the needs of several constituencies, the most notable being the
workshops held in Shakespeare. Presumably these adjustments warranted contract extensions
and so further costs were likely incurred.

c) Corridor residents from New Hamburg to Stratford have been artificially divided by the
media into sub groups; apparently signaling possible winners and losers, and these
perceptions will linger for a long time.

d) Hundreds of hours of community volunteer time, all unpaid, were invested to ensure that
‘public consultation’ phases were taken seriously. Thousands of hours of our local resident’s
time were spent in worry and concern.

e) Several more horrendous accidents occurred on the most dangerous section of the existing
corridor, from the train trestle west of New Hamburg to Shakespeare.

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f) Millions have been spent to find out what most farmers who live around here already know.

g) The right of local communities to self-determination reasserted itself. Political mobilization

has taken different forms and remains strong. The area’s agricultural business producers
clearly recognize their mutual long-term interest in keeping land designated agricultural land
free of encumbrances. Various municipal councils understand and are supportive of area
resident’s concerns.

h) These forces have helped reshape the corridor identification exercise from proposals for a
brand new 402 style fully controlled, closed access highway, end to end, from New Hamburg to
Stratford towards more realistic possibilities.

i) As well, significant changes have been made and recognized by the MTO regarding the
criteria to evaluate farm activity within a Class EA study. The initial proposals from the early
days of the study project have been canned, we hope forever. There is not a visible square inch
of new pavement anywhere but there have been gains in the perspectives now being applied to
decisions.

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3
Chapter

The Goals of ABC

ABC’s primary goal is to educate the MTO and its consultants on the
business of agriculture and to assist them in making the best decisions for
the community.

A BC defends the use of land designated for agriculture, against encroachment by

public infrastructure projects, in order to protect the viability and productivity of
agricultural business units.

Our mandate seeks to minimize the current and future impacts that large scale
infrastructure projects will have on primary food producing areas. ABC is not opposed
to road development, or in this case, to further expansion and development for an
enhanced highway 7/8 corridor. ABC does not oppose the provision of essential public
services nor does it have an issue with the alternate use of lands for non-agricultural
purposes, where and when that is fully justified.

Our interest is to curb the waste and loss of rapidly diminishing high-grade farm land
and minimize the impact of alternative land use on the essential activities of food
producers. Our belief is that by outlining the scale of business activity that modern food
production entails, and by educating various project participants regarding the
complexity (regulatory and other) of modern agriculture, that reasonable solutions and
demands on our fragile land base can be effectively co-managed for future generations.

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4
Chapter

The Two Main Issues

ABC will focus this brief on two main issues bearing directly on our
mandate.

B oth of these issues are empirical, that is to say that we believe sound management decisions
should be made by looking at rational options based on real numbers.

The first of these issues is the total amount of land identified that will be potentially removed from
agricultural production based on the currently identified corridor and route. It is disturbing that
these facts about acreage have been, until just a few days ago, absent from public view and opinion.

The second issue concerns the access producers need to their parcels of land as farming today
generally requires a mix of owned and rented properties utilized where ever they can be found.
Access by producers to satellite parcels of land forms an important element of modern large scale
farming with all its incumbent statutory nutrient management requirements. We will deal with
each of these issues in turn.

ISSUE A:
Land Removed From Agricultural Use
In a letter submitted February 23, 2011 to MTO and its consultants the following very specific
question was put forward by ABC.

ABC Question #1:

How much land - in acres or hectares - is it estimated will be taken out of Class 1, 2 and 3
agricultural use if the newly proposed route is the final choice?

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On March 15, we received this response signed by Fred Leech of AECOM.

Response to ABC Question #1:

The footprint of the entire route from west of Stratford to east of New Hamburg requires
a total of approximately 500 acres of land. Of the 500 acre total, approximately 140 acres
consists of the currently paved sections of Highway 7&8 and Perth Line 33/Lorne Avenue.
Furthermore, additional acreage is associated with these roads for shoulders, side clearance
areas, ditches, etc.

The portion of the route on (the) ‘new’ alignment from east of Stratford to east of Shakespeare
requires approximately 150 acres of land. All of the lands outside of the urban areas of New
Hamburg and Stratford are classed and designated as agricultural lands (CLI Class 1, 2 or 3).
However, not all of these lands are currently being used for agricultural purposes.

Discussion

ABC realizes that the above noted estimates are rough and many factors may change these
figures. However, what we do not understand is why it has taken until now to get figures on the
table. This was supposed to be a Class EA study.

It was mandated to carefully consider the economic impacts of routes and certainly the
agricultural impacts have been voiced by ABC, since day one. No one in their right mind can
usefully evaluate these sorts of trade-offs without having solid empirical estimates of the
amounts of land taken by various route options.

Just as no farm business would foresee planting a crop without knowing the size of the field,
so too the province must publicly declare its infrastructure footprints.

Even our municipal councils have been blind-sided. How can local councils be asked to
responsibly endorse a route, without knowing how much municipally taxed property will be
severed and rezoned? This is, in a word, ridiculous, and that should be the reaction of the
councils of Perth East, Perth South, Wilmot West and even Perth County.

Five hundred acres may not seem like much to our urban residents, but it is about the footprint
of one good sized producer. This land will be gone forever; a road bed with four lanes of
pavement is a very slow form of crop rotation.

Mr. Leech notes, and this is critical, that their estimate does not include shoulders, ditches,
and road-side clearances. It also does not include the extra land that will be required for access
ramps, flyovers, underpasses, and other features needed for this type of complex road design.
We have been told repeatedly that these impacts cannot be assessed until the next road design
phase is undertaken.

While there is some truth in that view, very rough estimates can still be made. For instance,
ABC contacted transportation engineers at the Region of Waterloo and had them estimate the
extra land used for two basic on/off ramp interchanges now operating on highway 7/8 east of
New Hamburg at the Baden and Phillipsburg exits. The extra land needed (beyond the basic
corridor footprint) for these two very basic ramp exits average 27.5 acres. (More details on

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these examples can be obtained from ABC). So, to prepare a rough estimate of the extra land
needed for basic interchanges in any proposed corridor option tabled by MTO all one has to do
is count up the number of interchanges foreseen, multiply by 27.5 and voila!

In ABC’s view the estimate of a five hundred acre footprint is a low end figure and it is
obtained by multiplying the length in kilometers of the currently recommended corridor by 70
meters, which is the average land width required for a four-lane undivided route. ABC knows
this, because we did our own rough calculations for the realigned stretch along the railway
between Road 106 and the planned intersection at Line 33. Mr. Leech offers us a figure of
approximately 150 acres for the new realigned section and ABC estimated 146 acres using
similar basic calculations.

Again, this may not seem like much geography to others, but some of this land will be taken
out of production from the very same producers that had land removed from the front of their
property by MTO on the north side of 7/8 over 30 years ago. This is clearly a case of double
jeopardy.

The perception on the part of these producers is that they are being hit twice and for nothing.
The land taken long ago was taken out of production, and as MTO does not define itself as a
land leasing agency, that land was not permitted for farm use all these years. Now it appears
that the same land will not be used again and that even more property will be taken for the new
realignment while access to other farm parcels will be restricted. This is manifestly not fair.
The only sensible thing for the consultants to recommend and for MTO to do is to use the
existing lands they already own west of Shakespeare.

Furthermore the idea of realigning and running the new route south of and adjacent to the
railway tracks seems fraught with unknowns. Is there not a distance separation requirement
between a rail-bed and the highway for any such proposal? How much land will an acceptable
separation require? Surely the highway traffic has to be protected from a derailment event.
Admittedly, this is an old rail-bed and speeds of freight trains are quite moderate, but in a
derailment they still travel long distances due to their inherent momentum.

Then there is talk of high-speed rail in future as oil and gas prices rise. This will likely require a
new second rail-bed and even more vehicle and distance separation. How much land will this
require? The consultants have been very quiet about their discussions with the rail company
and the community has not been given any access to these considerations.

Under these circumstances, how is it possible for communities and councilors to make
informed decisions when so few estimates of the real impacts of a realignment have been
offered?

The amount of farmland to be taken for any recommended 7/8 route is the issue. It has to be
put squarely on the table. Two and a half years after the first wildly ambitious corridor options

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were presented by AECOM in the summer of 2008 we are now only beginning to see the first
tentative estimates of what the real impact on the land base will be, with, of course, numerous
escape clauses and provisos.

How is this sleight of hand possible? ABC thinks it is the result of an incremental decision
model that pervades the entire Class EA process and this distracts our attention from the main
order of business; what is to be done with our land.

Later in this brief we will discuss the inadequacy of this incremental decision model and how it
tyrannizes the whole project, step by step, and gradually dissipates our time and energies.

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5
Chapter

Mapping the Business of Agriculture

The consultants have modified the evaluative criteria that apply to
agriculture as a result of the past three years of community and ABC
involvement.

A s of March 10, 2010 they recognized four criteria: Class 1, 2, and 3 Land, Farm
Infrastructure, Operations on Individual Farms and Transportation Linkages between
Multiple- Farm Operations.

Report H: Milestone Report - Selection of Detailed Planning (Route) Alternatives for Provincial
Highways - January 2011 then added two additional criteria under the headings; Operations
on Individual Farms: High Investment Agricultural Operations, and Established
Agricultural Farm Communities. Report H also incorporates the ABC generated definition for
Integrated Agricultural Business Units which was first presented to the consultants in March
2010.

After nearly three years of protests by ABC, the January 2011 report also now includes
reference to the Nutrient Management Act in the planning rational.

The environmental planning process is built upon a basic process of going out and doing an
inventory and then applying various criteria to see what you have got. It requires transparency
and accurate information in order to properly evaluate alternatives. While the January 2011
report now offers more adequate criteria to begin an evaluation of the business of agriculture
the consultant’s application of these criteria is seriously deficient.

As an example, the consultants have knowingly used drainage maps that are inaccurate and
over 10 years old and are clearly marked as deficient. The project’s staff appears to have
undertaken a ‘drive by’ analysis in order to place a value on individual farm buildings as
opposed to relating how these buildings function within an entire business operation. They
reference in their analysis parcels of farm land where “nutrient management is assumed to
occur” and properties where there may be “potential impacts on tile drainage”.

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These professional guesses arise because the consultants have chosen not to systematically
inventory the agricultural producers. Their real inventory work is limited to the location of
land classes and they muster only sporadic and incorrect information when seeking to apply
their newly developed agricultural criteria.

Their analysis of flora and fauna in the study area is systematic and was documented through
seasonal field and woodlot investigations in 2008/2009. So why do the same requirements not
apply to agriculture? Do farmers have to become “endangered species” before consultants
recognize that the green land surrounding farm buildings is an integral part of their ability to
operate as a business and produce food. This land is not simply excess open space!

ABC’s Mapping Response

The Public Information Centres (PIC’s) focused greatly on the use of maps to display the
inventory and analysis of information identified as important by the consultants. As a
supplement to the PIC maps, ABC has mirrored this approach and prepared four maps deemed
important to us for careful consideration by the study team and others prior to the final
settlement of a route.

Map 1 is for illustration purposes only. It is not a complete survey of all producers along the
suggested corridor but rather it is an example of what a volunteer group can map over a two
day period working with volunteer information. It incorporates all the mapped information
presented to the consultants at a workshop in March, 2010 as well as further information
collected in a farm kitchen on March 4, 2011.

An Integrated Agricultural Business Unit is defined as: the land base, owned or leased
necessary to operate a viable agricultural business while meeting the current statutory
requirements.
ABC developed this definition so that useful data could be collected and replicated along the
corridor. Following this definition Map 11 reveals the footprint of land holdings for twenty-two
(22) Integrated Agricultural Business Units falling between the Perth County line and
Stratford where producers have agreed to publicly display the parcels used in their operations.

The Public Information Centres (PIC’s) focused greatly on the use of maps to display the
inventory and analysis of information identified as important by the consultants. As a
supplement to the PIC maps, ABC has mirrored this approach and prepared four maps deemed
important to us for careful consideration by the study team and others prior to the final
settlement of a route.

The 22 business units identified in Map 1 represent 186 parcels of land covering 14,496.0
acres or 5,866.3 hectares of agricultural land. This is not trivial. The proposed route tabled in
January 2011 will impact all of these businesses and many others not mapped that fall along
the proposed corridor.

1
All Cartography from maps.at.work@gmail.com

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Map 2 shows the movement of farm equipment used for hauling manure within each of the
representative livestock producing business units, movement from the barns and stock-yards
to the fields where the manure is spread.

Map 3 shows the movement of farm equipment used in the planting and harvesting of forage
crops, movement from the equipment barns and sheds where machinery is stored out to the
fields and then on to crop storage areas.

Map 4 is an amalgamation of manure and forage movement for all twenty-two business units.
For clarity and the sake of brevity it does not show all other forms of farm equipment
movement required by these 22 business units.

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MAP 1

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MAP 2

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MAP 3

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MAP 4

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ISSUE B:
Access to Parcels of Land for Agricultural Use

Transportation access within and among farm properties and non-contiguous parcels is vital to
agricultural business viability. Any serious restriction to this access negatively impacts the
business of agriculture. Agriculture relies on the use of safe transportation networks within
and between farm units and ABC wants to ensure this highway is designed for the safe
transportation of agricultural equipment along the entire route.

The culture of agriculture within the study area builds on a history of formal and informal
arrangements for sharing the use of land and equipment. Some producers rent or lease some
or all of their neighbour’s land for different purposes. Some producers share in the ownership
of farm equipment that is used on several farms and may be stored in one or more different
locations. These operating arrangements intensify the need for open access to the patchwork of
land units that are found to be so visually striking in Map 1.

The need for safe transportation networks along highway 7&8 and the need for unfettered
open access to the north south township side-road and routes is empirically manifested in the
following realities:

• One pork producer that is represented on the maps produces 1 ½ million gallons of
liquid manure that must be spread on both owned and rented land; land that is not
contiguous.

• One producer makes over 400 trips annually to plant, harvest and store forage
crops.

• Another producer makes over 850 trips per year to spread manure on a patchwork
of land units found north and south of highway 7&8.

• Many producers cross highway 7&8 and the railway tracks several times a day to
service the needs of their livestock and to move vital equipment.

• Many producers move farm equipment along and through this area in all seasons to
not only work their own land but also their neighbour’s property.

• Custom farm operators come into this area from Hickson, Amulree, Tavistock,
Wartburg, Harmony and elsewhere with balers, combines, massive fertilizer
spreaders and huge crop sprayers that contain hundreds of gallons of provincially
controlled herbicides and insecticides.

• Sections of any controlled access highway that do not allow farm lanes will escalate
the costs of production with more time spent on the road and more gas and diesel
fuel wasted.

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Therefore, as anyone can see the maintenance of open access to north-south roads which are
used daily throughout the year to move agricultural equipment between properties and farm
parcels is vitally important.

However, fair and equitable treatment is also important. The consultants have indicated to us
that sections of highway from the Perth county line to Shakespeare may have fairly open access
but that the new ‘realigned’ section proposed west of Shakespeare would likely be closed and
controlled. This is simply unacceptable and its implementation will create enormous tensions
within the community. It will be said, and rightly so; why do they get farm lanes and open side-
roads and we don’t! Some producers have already indicated to us that any such actions will
put them right out of business.

It is incumbent on public decision makers to provide answers that offer fair and equitable
treatment to all affected parties. Therefore, any attempt to restrict rather than facilitate open
access to properties and parcels of land that constitute an integrated agricultural business unit
within a finalized corridor will be unilaterally opposed by ABC.

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6
Chapter

The Tyranny of Incremental Decision

Making

The Agriculture Business Community finds the Class EA process to be

long and tedious. It moves from very large scale considerations to
more detail.

W hat is forgotten is that the community is the same whether the consultant is looking at it
from the large or small scale. Some land owners will be merely inconvenienced. Others
will be impacted severely. At each step information is mapped and the community is asked to
respond, but the data to make a wise and efficacious decision is never provided. Who can make
a choice among dozens of alternatives when the differences between options are described as
“more than” or “less than”: More or less than what?

If one were cynical, one might think the consultation process is designed to wear down the
community with successive incremental proposals rather than employ the community as active
participants. Although community participation has been sought in every stage since 2008,
ABC has been stymied by a planning approach that is based on vague information and a
constant mantra from the consultants that the information we are really looking for will ‘finally
arrive’ in subsequent phases.

Yet, the result of each consultation stage pushes the consultant onward to the next stage
without having to revise any of the flawed background information and without being forced
to bring the needed level of detail to the decisions at hand.

Our ABC brief dated February 6, 2009 identified that the consulting team did not provide
detailed and comparable data to gauge different options which they asked the community to

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make. For example, ABC noted that they did not identify the number of hectares or acres of
land each corridor would take out of farmland for each of the proposed options. We told them
we needed a higher level of data to proceed. Yet they continued on to the next step without
providing that necessary data to allow us to effectively respond to that phase.

The ABC brief dated October 30, 2009 requested that an accurate inventory strategy of farm
units be pursued to determine direct impacts on farm businesses before we could comment
on the options that were being proposed. None was provided and the consultant moved on to
the next stage.

In the ABC brief dated September 3, 2010 we noted that inventory maps used in the evaluation
process were ten years out of date and the criteria for evaluating farm infrastructure was
inadequate. Still, the process ground on. New data was neither obtained nor utilized. It is true
that new criteria were developed but they were not adequately applied because no inventory
exists.

The consulting process moves from one incremental phase to the next with no opportunity to
go back and review previous decisions and directions by supplementing them with new or
more adequate information.

ABC has the clear sense that if steps designed in 2008 were undertaken badly, they are still
considered to have been undertaken. A checkmark is placed beside that step and the process
proceeds regardless of the quality of the information used to assess the options.

At no point have the consultants identified the number of kilometers in each stretch they are
reviewing. At no point have they identified at any of the PIC’s the number of hectares or acres
of land which each tabled option will take from agriculture. At no point have the consultants
identified the number of agricultural businesses that will be affected. No inventory of farm
units was ever developed. No maps exist of farm business units save for those provided by ABC
to readers of this brief.

It is impossible to contribute to a process that continues to march forward with limited and
inaccurate information. Incrementally we are being led down a garden path, and frankly we
expect better.

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7
Chapter

ABC’s Recommendations to MTO and all

Municipal Councils
ABC recommends that the consultants and MTO amend their current plans in line with four
simple requests. ABC also urges all municipal councils involved to support these four logical
and practical recommendations.

1. That the final recommended corridor and route utilize the property previously taken out of
agriculture that MTO owns and has fenced west of Shakespeare on the north side of the
existing highway.

2. That the study team abandon any plans for restricting access to farms, side-roads and land
parcels through ‘closed’ controlled access measures for any stretch of the highway.

3. That MTO recognize and finally capitulate to the fact that traffic numbers and population
numbers in any plausible future scenario will never require a four lane controlled access route
such as highway 402.

4. That the consultants develop a design appropriate to our circumstances and that MTO start
immediately with land acquisitions and rehabilitation measures on the finalized route with
particular attention to the most accident prone sections.

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8
Chapter

Conclusion

Since the summer of 2008, ABC has chosen to play a positive role in
the education of MTO and the consultants on the business of
agriculture.

W hen it became apparent that agricultural specialists had not been included in the
consulting team, ABC made a commitment to the agricultural community to do the best
job possible in explaining the EA process to our members so they could be active and informed
participants as well as opening lines of communication to others to learn about the business of
agriculture.

The consultants are proposing that the province should take uncalculated amounts of land
from agriculture and limit transportation access for farm businesses along the preferred
corridor. This is neither rational nor equitable and ABC will vigorously pursue the defense of
farm business units until a fair proposal that makes sense to us, is tabled.

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