As part of the Places to Grow Food project, the Ontario Farmland Trust has produced Planning Regional Food Systems: A Guide for Municipal Planning and Develoment in the Greater Golden Horseshoe.  The manual includes suggestions for how municipalities can support agriculture and protect farmland.

(Instructions: for easy downloading, right click on the link above and select "save target as." Save the file to your desktop or hard drive).

Over the Summer of 2009, the OFT consulted with some of the province's best planners through a series of interviews and surveys, to gather ideas for best practices. The results of these interviews were used to build a list of relevant practices, including practices related to:
-        supporting new young farmers to foster farm succession,
-        municipal planning to foster local food production,
-        tools to protect the farmland itself,
-        impediments to local food marketing.

Specific topics covered in the guide include:

• Opportunities for implementing the good planning principles and policies set out in the Provincial Policy Statement
• The benefits of supporting agriculture, including Cost of Community Services studies (a case study approach used to determine the average fiscal contribution of existing local land uses)
• Municipal bylaws and policies to support the local food economy
• Infrastructure investments that would support agriculture
• An introduction to Community and Regional Food Planning

The guide will be distributed to municipalities and planners in Southern Ontario through a series of workshops starting in February 2010. Professional Associations that we will be contacting regarding workshops include:

• Ontario Professional Planners Institute (OPPI)
• Canadian Institute of Planners (CIP)
• Rural Ontario Municipalities Association (ROMA)
• Association of Municipalities of Ontario (AMO)