The Ontario Climate Emergency Campaign (OCEC) s a non-partisan campaign promoting awareness on the climate crisis and environmental issues. We empower citizens and urge political leaders to drive the urgent transformational changes needed to secure the present and the future of all Ontarians. The campaign is based on our 12-point Climate Action Plan, which has 232 signatory groups and 294 signatory individuals. Watch this CBC video clip about the campaign. To join OCEC, sign on as a group or sign on as an individual.

On October 19th, 2022 at Queen’s Park, OCEC held a press conference calling on all Ontarians to recognize the October 24, 2022 Ontario Municipal Election as a massive opportunity for public climate action by voting for pro-environmental candidates. Speakers included Dr. Mili Roy, Canadian Association of Physicians for the Environment; Jack Gibbons, Ontario Clean Air Alliance; Mitra Yakubi, Canadian Federation of Students Ontario; Doris Grinspun, Registered Nurses’ Association of Ontario, and Lyn Adamson, Climatefast. Read the press release and view the recording of the press conference.

To date 205 candidates from a wide range of Ontario municipalities have endorsed OCEC's 4 Point Municipal Climate Action Plan. The full expanded text of the Pledge plus instructions and online form for candidates to sign on are linked in the outreach letter and found at https://www.ontarioclimateemergency.ca/candidate-pledge.
Any questions about the pledge may be sent to ocec.info1@gmail.com.

Thank you to all the volunteers who sent the outreach letter to candidates. 

The theme of this newsletter, apart from the municipal election, is #9 of the OCEC Climate Action Plan: We will hold the Government of Ontario accountable to invest in local, organic, regenerative agriculture and plant-rich food systems. Specifically, we hold them accountable to:

• incentivize carbon storage in soil
• restore biodiversity and degraded ecosystems
• ensure food sovereignty and food security across the province
• increase public access to locally-sourced, affordable, sustainably-produced, and plant-rich foods and implement reductions in food waste
• _support farmers in shifting operations to regenerative agriculture. 
• support Indigenous communities wishing to maintain traditional food systems and enhance their food security. 
  

These actions must be embedded in legislation to ensure accountability, transparency and inclusion, with periodic mandated public reporting on all measurable outcomes. 

The effects of the climate crisis are increasingly felt by farmers in Ontario. Extreme weather events like recent heat domes, droughts, and intense flooding directly impact farmers and their ability to produce food for the province. It then comes as no surprise that many farmers are eager to take action to improve the sustainability & resilience of our food production system.

Agriculture, along with forestry and land use, accounts for about 25 percent of all human-created greenhouse gas emissions. It follows that some of the most innovative solutions to the climate crisis include changing how we farm. Regenerative agriculture is a system of farming aimed at rehabilitating and enhancing the entire system of the farm by emphasizing soil health, water management, and proper fertilizer use. Rather than stripping the land of its nutrients, regenerative agriculture practices improve the land’s resources.

In order for agriculture to shift to meet the demands of tackling the climate crisis, the government will need to invest in research and innovation that will support farmers in the transition to climate-friendly production systems. The NFU-O urges the Ontario government to establish resources and programs focused on research and financial support to help farmers measure and monitor soil carbon and adopt practices to mitigate the climate crisis.

The climate crisis is made worse by seemingly endless expansion projects in Ontario that result in the loss of prime farmland. By building new highways and expanding urban boundaries, the amount of land that can be sustainably farmed—and absorb atmospheric carbon is reduced. Urban sprawl, fueled by non-farm speculative acquisition, presents a clear threat to the protection of prime agricultural farmland. The NFU-O is a strong proponent of an approach that would see the implementation of firm urban boundaries that direct all urban growth inward, and emphasis placed on the permanent protection of farmland for agriculture. Environmental protection and food sovereignty, not developer driven growth, should be the defining driving force. Rather than removing “red tape” to spur development, substantive community consultation is required.

The Climate Action Plan of the Ontario Climate Emergency Campaign contains a number of important strategies and actions for us to collectively shift away from established paradigms and practices --- the business as usual --- toward more resilient and equitable systems in the immediate present and for future generations.

Given that we are in the middle of the autumn harvest season Point #9 of the CAP is very timely, as it implores us to “Invest in local, organic, regenerative agriculture & plant-rich food systems”.

For quite some time now we’ve heard about the importance of eating local and organic --- in other words, about reducing the fossil fuel imprint of our food having to travel great distances around the world in favour of purchasing from nearby farmers, and to select those foods that have been grown largely without the use of synthetic chemical fertilizers, herbicides and pesticides.

But what exactly does regeneration mean as it pertains to agriculture?

Simply put, it’s a practice of agriculture that is first and foremost about nurturing the restoration of healthy, living soils.

All our relations matter. The soil is a complex substance of organic and inorganic elements that ultimately sustains a highly complex web of life, from the microscopic bacteria and fungi that teem underground to the larger flora and fauna that live above the surface.

Plants and animals have always co-existed and co-evolved throughout history, mutually intertwined. It is only during the industrialization of agriculture during the long twentieth-century that the two were separated into monocropped fields and factory feedlots, to devastating effect for the soil microbiome and climate stability today.

At a time when the pandemic has shown the fragility of supply chains and the climate change crisis has highlighted the need for a smaller carbon footprint, the idea of sustainable local food has taken on renewed importance. But there is widespread concern that the province is not taking concrete steps to ensure that the future of farmland in the GTA is protected — and may be accelerating its decline.

A recent CTV News article reported that farmland is being gobbled up at an alarming rate in Ontario, according to the 2021 census. "The last census (2016), the loss was 175 acres per day. Now, it’s 319 acres per day, and this is quite simply, not sustainable,” said Mark Reusser, vice president of the Ontario Federation of Agriculture. Only five per cent of Ontario is usable farmland, which means every acre lost to housing developments is another acre lost that could produce food for the new owner of that house. “Only five per cent. And once it’s gone, it’s gone,” said Reusser, who farms near Waterloo.

Their plan includes detailed, quantified and costed steps to take in 1) Nitrogen Management, 2) Manure Storage and Handling, 3) Livestock Management, 4) Soil Management and 5) Wetland and Tree Management. See their 2022 report: Rooted in Climate Action: An ambitious roadmap for emissions reduction and resilience in the next Agricultural Policy Framework.

The 2021 federal budget represented an historic win for Canadian agriculture with an investment of $200 million in new funding over two years to support farmers to reduce emissions by improving nitrogen management, increasing adoption of cover cropping, and normalizing rotational grazing.