The City of Ottawa is huge. The land area that makes up our municipality is larger than Toronto, Montreal, Vancouver, Calgary and Edmonton combined. Nearly eighty percent of Ottawa’s land is rural, including farmland, greenspace, forested land and of course rural communities. For OCAF, thinking about sustainable city planning and climate solutions in Ottawa extends far beyond the urban boundary and must include rural strategies.
OCAF’s founder and co-Chair, Rebecca Aird, is helping to lead this way of thinking. Comments she submitted on the City of Ottawa’s Draft Economic Development Rural Plan speak to three important opportunities not reflected in the Draft. Each could deliver carbon savings, economic benefits and food security for years to come.
From Aird’s Submission:
Regenerative agriculture
There is strong and growing evidence that improves farm income primarily by reducing input costs and increasing resilience to various challenging including drought and pests. While the initial transition years can see higher costs and lower yields, within 3 to 6 years, profitability frequently surpasses conventional farming, often by large margins.
Given recognition of the ultimate benefits, there is growing support to help producers with the transition. One example is CANZA’s million acre challenge, which delivers cost-sharing incentives, technical support from trusted advisors, and peer-to-peer learning.
The federal government is also actively supporting the transition to regenerative agriculture through programs like the Sustainable Canadian Agricultural Partnership.
Another very important, tangible and local opportunity involves the use of Wollastonite as a soil amendment — a process known as enhanced rock weathering. It is a recognized regenerative practice that involves spreading a mineral-rich rock dust that balances pH, improves long-term soil health, boosts crop resilience, and permanently removes carbon dioxide from the atmosphere. UNDO Carbon, an international carbon credit organization, is subsidizing the use of Wollastonite from Canada’s only Wollastonite mine near Ottawa, in Seely’s Bay.
Renewable energy and battery storage
The Draft Economic Development Rural Plan currently has no mention of the important role that renewable energy and battery energy storage systems (BESS) can play in the rural economy and rural and regional energy resilience. These types of local projects in other Canadian cities generate income for rural landowners, as well as for rural communities via initiatives associated Community Development Funds. As one example, the Evolugen BESS project in South March involves a CDF commitment, amounting to $5 million over 20 years.
Food production for local consumption
Based on provincial data, most of the revenue earned by Ottawa’s farming sector comes from products whose markets lie largely beyond the city — commodity crops like corn, soybeans and feed grains, as well as dairy. It’s also certain that most of what Ottawa residents eat does not come from local farms.
While these realities reflect large-scale economic dynamics, it is possible to shift the balance towards more local food production, thereby increasing opportunities for smaller-scale farms. But farmers need efficient pathways to get their products to consumers. The growth in Farmers Markets in and around Ottawa is great. But it is not enough. To get to a scale that will really make a difference to the local economy and to regional food security, Ottawa needs significantly more and better integrated food storage, distribution and processing infrastructure. These needs should feature in the City of Ottawa’s economic strategies, especially given that money spent on local goods circulates longer within the local economy, stimulating more local employment (not to mention resilience benefits in the face of growing volatility).
OCAF’s mission is to mitigate local emissions to help the city of Ottawa meet its climate goals. To this effect OCAF is supporting rural solutions, including pathways for clean energy solutions, as well as low carbon densification of existing built up areas, to reduce the expansion into rural lands.