Ontario Agriculture

The network for agriculture in Ontario, Canada

Do you agree with the OFA that no more wind turbines should be built until a number of issues are dealt with?

The OFA has made a call to the Ontario government to suspend industrial wind turbines saying there are too many unanswered questions about its value, and that the debate over turbines is polarizing rural communities.

Read the OFA article - click here.

What are your thoughts? Do you agree that no more wind turbines should be built until a number of issues are dealt with?

Take the POLL: Do you think Ontario should halt wind turbines? - click here

Views: 2135

▶ Reply to This

Replies to This Discussion

Permalink Reply by OntAG Admin on January 20, 2012 at 8:12am
formosafarmer profile

formosafarmer Had a great talk with a farm family that is Pro Wind Turbines. Good perspective. Only thing they are against is people stopping their choice

Permalink Reply by OntAG Admin on January 20, 2012 at 8:48am
Permalink Reply by OntAG Admin on January 20, 2012 at 10:03am
modernfarmer profile

modernfarmer Ontario farm group calls for halt to wind power developmenttgam.ca/DQyw via @globeandmail iPhone app

Permalink Reply by Joann on January 21, 2012 at 4:12am

I don't believe this is anything more than political posturing.

Our Premier has, in my personal opinion, shown nothing short of contempt towards farmers for the past 9 years.

Ontario is preparing for a budget.  The OFA dealt the first hand.


It will be interesting to see how the government play their cards.

Permalink Reply by OntAG Admin on January 21, 2012 at 5:21am
AlKerslake Al Kerslake
@OntAg wind turbines are only effective in selected areas
Permalink Reply by OntAG Admin on January 21, 2012 at 5:27am

NewHamburgIndy

NewHamburgIndy
Ontario Federation of Agriculture supports moratorium on . What will it mean for projects like this?
Permalink Reply by OntAG Admin on January 21, 2012 at 5:30am

On the OFA website article re OFA stance on wind turbines by Mark Wales, President, Ontario Federation of Agriculture:

Wind power versus rural power (2012)

 

The Ontario Federation of Agriculture (OFA) is calling on the provincial government to suspend the invasion of rural Ontario with industrial wind turbines.

 

Earlier this week OFA took a hard look at our own concerns with wind turbines. We have always been concerned with the price paid for wind power and the fact that it is not dispatchable – it is not stored for use during peak demand periods, making it highly inefficient. This was noted by Ontario’s Auditor General in his recent Annual Report in December 2011.    

 

In addition, our technical concerns with regard to setback issues, induced current and noise impacts remain unaddressed.   

 

OFA believes that the amendments to the Planning Act made under the authority of the Green Energy Act are not having the desired effect of providing for good planning. Removal of municipal input into industrial wind turbine projects has alienated the rural population and ignored competing community needs and policies.

All of these issues have been emphasized clearly by our members. Over the past few weeks we have clearly heard OFA members tell us of health concerns, concerns over the loss of farmland, encumbrances on their farm properties and many more issues related to the imposition of wind turbines across our rural landscape.

Most disconcerting of all is the impact wind turbines are having on the relationships across rural communities. When wind developments come to a community neighbours are pitted against neighbours. The issue of industrial wind turbine development is preoccupying the rural agenda.

OFA is telling the Ontario government our members have had enough. Rural Ontario cannot continue to be torn apart by wind turbines. The province needs to immediately suspend any further developments until our farm families and rural residents can be assured their interests are protected.

On behalf of rural Ontario, OFA needs to see the government enable community involvement in wind developments to ensure local planning issues and priorities are addressed. We need wind power to be priced right and made dispatchable so it can be used when we need it, rather than selling it at a loss during the nighttime. We need health and nuisance concerns addressed immediately and we need serious studies done on reasonable setback distances for the newer and larger turbines being planned.

The onus is on our provincial government to ensure the interests of rural Ontarians are protected. Our members are clearly telling us now that they are not. There are very serious concerns with wind energy as it is currently rolling out.

OFA supports green energy – Ontario needs a reliable, affordable source of renewable energy for our future. But we all need to work to ensure that green energy projects will respect concerns for noise, community involvement and price, balanced against the effective provision of that power.

Permalink Reply by OntAG Admin on January 21, 2012 at 4:47pm


apasztor829:31pm via Twitter for BlackBerry®

@OntAg would like to say we have a turbine on r farm and have no problems with it at all, my health is great, #OFA give your head a shake

Permalink Reply by Colette McLean on January 23, 2012 at 6:30am

Yes,  I agree!  no more turbines and thank OFA for putting forward a fairly clear proposal on what should be done to address the very real problems surrounding Industrial wind turbines and wind energy development.  Wind is unreliable, intermittent, inefficient, non-dispatchable, & expensive.  It has never been proven to reduce the burning or mining of coal, reduce emissions from fossil fuel plants, provide long term green jobs that does not atrophy jobs in other sectors.  It will at best provide 5% of Ontario energy needs & requires fossil fuel backup to compensate for it's intermittency.  The cost benefit analysis has not been done,  read the AG's report.   http://www.auditor.on.ca/en/reports_en/en11/303en11.pdf

Permalink Reply by Colette McLean on January 23, 2012 at 6:32am

Not everyone's health is affected & stating that you r not affected suggest others r lying.  Why would these people lie? Maybe ur lying because u make money!

OntAG Admin said:


apasztor829:31pm via Twitter for BlackBerry®

@OntAg would like to say we have a turbine on r farm and have no problems with it at all, my health is great, #OFA give your head a shake

Permalink Reply by Colette McLean on January 23, 2012 at 6:51am

"Most disconcerting of all is the impact wind turbines are having on the relationships across rural communities" As a farmer who was presented with the chance to have a turbine but found some very worrisome issues with the contracts, (first-rights of refusal, postponement of mortgages etc)  I can attest to how relationships have been shattered because I took a different stance.  Our neighbour wanted the turbines & because of the disagreement over the wind issue resulted in him pulling away from our custom combine services.

Permalink Reply by Colette McLean on January 23, 2012 at 6:57am

So what is their perspective.  This is not just about the property right of the landowners who want turbines,  it is also the land rights of those next to the turbines.  Because of required setbacks,  landowners with no turbines are limited with the future development (eg. barns, outbuildings, even their own energy projects)



OntAG Admin said:

formosafarmer profile

formosafarmer Had a great talk with a farm family that is Pro Wind Turbines. Good perspective. Only thing they are against is people stopping their choice

▶ Reply to Discussion

RSS

Agriculture Headlines from Farms.com Canada East News - click on title for full story

The Most Wanted Wheat Seed Across the Prairies — AAC WALSH

PART ONE The sign was up before anyone knew who put it there. No name. No description. Just a dark silhouette nailed to the side of the grain elevator, paper already curling at the edges where the prairie wind worried it loose. MOST WANTED. That was all it said. In a town like this, that was enough. People here understood value. They understood timing. They noticed things that arrived quietly and stayed put. By midmorning, more than a few sets of eyes had found their way to the elevator wall, lingered longer than necessary, then moved on without comment. At the café, steam rose off coffee cups and hung in the air like unfinished sentences. “Yield and protein like that,” someone said eventually, not looking up, “oughta be outlawed.” It was meant as a joke. It didn’t land like one. No one asked who that was. Nobody needed to. The phrase carried weight all on its own, passing from table to table, slipping into conversations that paused just long enough to acknowledge it. By the

Canada-China Trade Agreement Boosts Outlook for Canola and Prairie Seed Sheds

Renewed exports may narrow the basis and reduce surplus stocks, but rebuilding grower confidence will take time. Tariffs and economic trends are often discussed in the abstract, but their consequences couldn’t be more concrete for Prairie seed sheds. In recent months, real-world examples have already reared their heads — such as canola multiplications in California facing counter-tariffs — forcing Canada’s seed sector to adapt to a trade environment that can change quickly, even when agreements are reached. The recent trade deal between Canada and China has brought some much-needed relief to the sector, particularly around market access and export movement. But for many farmers and seed companies, the agreement also underscores a hard truth: the impacts of trade disruptions don’t disappear overnight. It is little surprise that global trade ripples affect local decisions: fewer seed options, changing input costs, and constrained access to genetics. “Tariffs create uncertainty in an

Canada Gains Expanded Meat Access in Indonesia

Canada has secured a major expansion of market access for beef and pork exports to Indonesia, marking a significant milestone following the signing of the Canada–Indonesia Comprehensive Economic Partnership Agreement (CEPA) last September. 

'Phone in one hand, beer in the other': High-tech automation is giving farmers more time

Anyone visiting Don Badour’s cow-calf operation in the last 18 months will have noticed his cattle sporting some spiffy orange bling around their necks. The bovine baubles aren’t just for looks, however. They’re part of a sophisticated virtual fencing system that helps the Lanark County farmer monitor and track his herd’s movement and wellbeing. Badour is quite pleased with the investment — and so are the cows. “I thought that the cows might be not too happy with them on, but we put them on, they gave their heads one or two shakes, and that's it,” Badour said during a panel discussion at the 2026 Northern Ontario Ag Conference, hosted by the Northern Ontario Farm Innovation Alliance in Sudbury Feb. 6-7. “They've come to realize they're there. So we haven't had any trouble with the cows rejecting them.”? ?Made by the New Zealand company Gallagher, the eShepherd neck bands weigh about eight pounds each and are powered by solar-charged batteries. They run on GPS and the system is ope

Trump EPA sued over reapproval of dicamba herbicide as farm and environmental groups warn of renewed crop damage

Farmers and environmental organizations have launched a new legal challenge against the Environmental Protection Agency, arguing its latest approval of the controversial herbicide dicamba ignores court rulings, scientific evidence and the interests of growers harmed by chemical drift. The lawsuit, filed Friday in federal court by a coalition that includes the National Family Farm Coalition, the Center for Biological Diversity, the Center for Food Safety and Pesticide Action & Agroecology Network, challenges the EPA’s decision to re-register dicamba for use on genetically engineered soybeans and cotton. The decision marks the latest chapter in a years-long dispute over dicamba, a weedkiller widely used in U.S. agriculture but criticized for its tendency to volatilize and drift, damaging nearby crops, orchards and natural vegetation. “EPA’s re-registration of dicamba flies in the face of a decade of damning evidence, real world farming know-how and sound science, and, oh-by-the-way, t

© 2026   Created by Darren Marsland.   Powered by

Badges  |  Report an Issue  |  Terms of Service