Norfolk County’s Agriculture Advisory Board supports more on-farm diversified uses permitted in prime agricultural lands.
AAB members met with Norfolk County’s Community Planning staff recently to discussed new guidelines for diversified uses on-farm. It was agreed that more opportunity needs to be written into the revised Official Plan so that farmers can respond to the challenges of modern agriculture, while ensuring that any new uses are not in conflict with farming.
New guidelines from the Province of Ontario have helped shape the changes. Municipalities can choose to be more flexible or restrictive when considering the guidelines. Overall, planners and AAB members agreed that Norfolk County should be more flexible.
Next steps will be to provide options to Norfolk County Council so that Planning staff and the Official Plan Review consultant, Matt Reniers, can work toward enabling policy that will eventually create more flexibility in the zoning by-law.
More about the Official Plan Review
More about the Agriculture Advisory Board
Norfolk County Agriculture Advisory Board (2017) Members (left to right): James Hill, Doug Long, Clark Hoskin (County staff liaison), Dusty Zamecnik, Mike Bakos, Anita Buehner, John Picard, Trish Fournier, Mike Columbus (Council liaison), Brett Schuyler (Chair). Absent: Kees Meijaard, Murray McLaughlin, Erich Remler. Photo: Dave Douglas
