Having well established policies for agricultural areas helps to protect our farmland from urban sprawl, contamination, and parcel fragmentation. Our updated policies help reduce the timelines, fees, and applications attributed to establishing a use on a farm property in order to help diversify our agricultural economy.
Do you have questions about adding an Agriculture-Related or On-Farm Diversified Use to your farm?
Check out our helpful Planning your Agriculture-Related Use and On-Farm Diversified Use Guide to help you get started with your renovation or building protect for your Farm. You can also view the guide by visiting www.brant.ca/OFDUGuide or by contacting staff at planning@brant.ca. The guide will let you know if your property will qualify for a project like this, what requirements there may be to safely pursue your project, and what options are available if your property doesn't quite meet the requirements to get started.
| Policy Directions for Agriculture-Related Uses |
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| Policy Directions for On-Farm Diversified Uses |
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We've updated our land-use policies to consider options for diversifying agricultural areas
throughout the County of Brant.
Based on Provincial legislation and a noted desire for certain permissions in our rural areas, the County has updated our agricultural policies. These changes will improve our agricultural economy and help our farms branch out and add to their income potential. This project focused on the Province's permitted uses in the prime agricultural areas, including agricultural, agriculture-related and on-farm diversified uses (OFDUs). The goal of this policy update was to help the County of Brant enhance its agricultural systems and land base to further protect and enhance the important functions of the agricultural economy in our area. Check out the project time-line at the bottom of this web-page for more information, including key dates and contact information.
Did you know?
The Province of Ontario considers the County of Brant to be a prime agricultural area. The majority of the soil in the County of Brant is considered to have fair to high productivity for common field crops to grow. As a prime agricultural area, our planning policies are required to protect agricultural practices to ensure they are not hindered by surrounding uses.
What's Permitted in Agricultural Areas?
As a way to protect the Province's agricultural land, the Provincial Policy Statement, or PPS (2020) sets out 3 categories of uses that are permitted in prime agricultural areas, as shown below. They are meant to be general land-use permissions that guide a municipalities specific permissions in rural areas and are further described by the Ministry of Agriculture, Food, and Rural Affairs (OMAFRA) in their Guidelines on Permitted Uses in Ontario's Prime Agricultural Areas (Publication 851). These permissions are dependent on the location and size of the use, and its relationship to a property's farming operation.
This includes growing crops, raising livestock, greenhouses, tobacco kilns, plant/tree nurseries, and minimal amounts of processing to make a product saleable.
Click the image to learn more about these uses.
This includes research, storage, processing, distribution, supply, sale, and auction of products grown or produced in the area's agricultural system.
Click the image to learn more about these uses.
This includes a broad range of complimentary and value-added uses such as breweries, bakeries, cafés, cooking classes, specialized trades (woodworking, welding etc.), recreational and agri-tourism uses (bed and breakfast, wine tasting etc.), retail uses (farm market, antiques, etc.) and home occupations that support rural areas (a professional office, hair dresser, day care etc.).
Click the image to learn more about these uses.
Project Timeline
We've updated our policies! This project was approved by Council on November 3rd, 2020.
If you would like to see what the process looked like for this project, view the checklist below.
If you have any questions about this project please contact Staff below.
| Project Timeline - OFDUs | ||||||||
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(June/July 2020)
(on YouTube September 1st, 2020)
(September/October 2020)
(October 2020) To summarize what we’ve heard from the public, stakeholders, and various agencies about the project, we presented a summary of the feedback that helped shape the proposed policy directions.
(October 2020) This commenting period, as required under The Planning Act, also provided another engagement opportunity before Staff made their recommendation to Council for a decision on the changes.
(November 2020) This meeting is available for viewing on the County's YouTube page at this link.
Once the By-Law for the project has been finalized and passed by the Council, it will come into force and effect upon the completion of its appeal period. There is an approximately 35 day appeal period that will open after the decision by Council is made and the amending By-Law is passed. 1. The County of Brant Clerk's Division will give notice of the By-Law's passing within 15 days of the Council meeting. 2. This will begin a 20 day period for filing a notice of appeal to the Municipal Clerk to appeal the decision of Council to the Local Planning Appeal Tribunal (LPAT). More information on this process can be found at this link.
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Background Research
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