Southern Ontario's limited supply of agricultural land is going out of production at an increasing rate. Urban sprawl and farmland severances contribute to the loss of thousands of acres of productive agricultural land in Ontario each year. Over 2000 farms and 150,000 acres of farmland in the GTA alone were lost to production in the two decades between 1976 and 1996. This loss represented approximately 18% of Ontario 's Class 1 farmland being converted to urban purposes. In addition, increasing rural severances provide ever-greater interference with agricultural production.

Currently the long-term protection of Ontario 's agricultural land is not adequately promoted, either through specific legislation, incentives or voluntary initiatives. Instead, farmland is treated as any other land area in the land use planning process. We believe that agricultural land should be viewed as a valuable and limited natural resource that must be managed and protected because it provides multiple public benefits. If we, the farming community, do not take the initiative to preserve farmland now, who will?