Sophie Kuijper Dickson, LJI Journalist
Farmers from all corners of the MRC des Collines-de-l’Outaouais are putting their heads together to come up with an updated vision for how to support and grow the agricultural sector across the territory over the next five years.
At consultation sessions hosted by the MRC in Luskville, La Pêche and Val-des-Monts last week, MRC staff heard from a diversity of producers about their unique and shared business challenges, and facilitated conversations around what the MRC could do to address them.
These meetings were organized as part of the MRC’s project of mapping an updated agricultural zone development plan (PDZA), a planning tool designed by the province to increase communication and develop a relationship between a region’s agricultural industry and the governments that manage it.
This tool is critical in guiding local governments as they develop their land use and development plans, to ensure these are aligned with agricultural needs.
The MRC des Collines-de-l’Outaouais put out its first PDZA in 2019, which listed goals in line with several priorities, including ensuring the sustainability of agricultural zones, supporting current farm businesses and encouraging new ones, and supporting farmers in getting their products to market.
Now, for the price of $66,628 paid to a consulting firm guiding the process, the MRC is working to update this plan.
At the Mar. 17 consultation in Luskville, the first of the three, over a dozen farmers from the Municipality of Pontiac shared their thoughts on what priorities the MRC should set out in its new development plan.
Among them were Blake Draper, who took over his family’s cow-calf operation almost 30 years ago and has been running it ever since, and Justin Alary, the fifth generation to work on his family’s dairy and grain farm, Ferme Stepido.
“The first [PDZA], the goals were a bit hard to quantify or see where we were in obtaining them,” said Alary, who’s been sitting on the MRC’s PDZA committee tasked with keeping track of progress towards its stated goals.
He said a priority for him is to see the new PDZA, a fairly expensive endeavour, to build in better means of measuring progress.
Beyond this, he stated the biggest thing he would like to see come out of this development plan is the hiring of an agriculture-specific staff member at the MRC who can be the go-to person for all farmers.
“Have one resource person that knows everyone’s needs, that has the opinions of all the dynamic producers, and that person has a vision of where everyone wants to go, and can work with everyone, and guide everyone,” Alary said.
“Everyone wants to move forward, and has good ideas. It’s just, where to start? We have a region that has so much potential, with so many different types of producers, but where do we go with all that?”
Draper, for his part, said he hopes a new PDZA can support municipalities in better caring for the territory through road and ditch maintenance, which he knows is challenging to do without raising taxes, but said would help reduce some of the administrative hurdles he encounters.
“To get a ditch cleaned, depending on how many acres of land it drains, sometimes you’ve got to go to the municipality to apply for a permit, go to the MRC and apply with them, have their engineer look to see whether it needs environmental consultation, and take it ahead to the ministry of environment,” he said.
“If it drains over 400 acres, then you have to go through this consultation process, and it can take a few years.”
Beyond this, he said he’d like to see the MRC help bring more local food transformation facilities to the region, develop an MRC des Collines brand for local agricultural products, and support older farmers in finding people to take over their businesses.
“Farmers are getting older, it’s getting harder to get young ones into it, and harder to keep them into it when they do get in,” Draper said. “That’s one of the things we’ve been discussing, is what can we do to make it so that a young person could start up farming and make a living.”
MRC des Collines warden Marc Carrière said challenges of all scales were discussed over the course of the three consultation meetings, but that it’s important the MRC target challenges over which it can actually have influence.
“We’re all saying the same – we have to address things that we can resolve,” Carrière said, noting the MRC’s work to understand producer’s priorities is far from over.
He said the firm hired to lead the PDZA update is conducting a series of one-on-one interviews with farmers in different types of production to better understand their unique needs, and pointed to an online survey, which has already received 50 responses and is still open for input, that is also being used to gather feedback.
He said the MRC’s goal is to finish the new PDZA by the end of this year.