Looking north to rebuild the herd: beef farmers look to gain ground in the Clay Belt.

• Author: Ross, Ian
• Position: Temiskaming & Region

After the turn of the last century, the provincial government set about creating a "New Ontario" by offering land and cash to populate the Great Northern Clay Belt with first-time farmers.

That top-down and ill-conceived strategy to colonize the North turned out to be an expensive failure that was finally put out of its misery by Premier Mitch Hepburn in the 1930s.

These days, there's a grassroots movement afoot by the Beef Farmers of Ontario (BFO) who are eyeballing this prairie-like stretch of land as the most logical place to revive and expand the cow-calf herd in the province.

The 19,000-strong group has launched its Beef North action plan, a lobbying and awareness campaign that is both a recruiting tool to attract farmers north and the cornerstone of their negotiations with Queen's Park to open up Crown land to farming.

"There's a lot of the province that's very underutilized as far as farmland is concerned," said Matt Bowman, a fourth-generation beef farmer with a herd of 110 Charolais, located in the Thornloe area of Temiskaming.

Bowman, who was recently named president of the Beef Farmers, is spearheading the effort to stem the decline in Ontario's beef production and offer an affordable option for the next generation of farmers.

In 2004, there were 410,000 head of beef cattle in Ontario, compared to barely 290,000 head in 2014.

Canada's mad cow crisis (200305) took a devastating toll on the industry and when markets finally recovered many cattlemen saw it as a window to get out.

The average age of an Ontario beef farmer is 54.5 years and there's been more money to be made in other competing commodities, Bowman said.

For the last two years, Bowman and the BFO directors have been ruminating over ways to reenergize the industry and have concluded that expansion into the North is the only solution.

Just under 13 million acres is being farmed in Ontario. The Clay Belt has 16 million acres that the Beef Farmers say could support cow-calf production.

A satellite image in the Beef North brochure shows a striking contrast in rural development on the Clay Belt from the mostly forested Ontario side to the extensive blocks of farms in the Abitibi region of northwestern Quebec.

"For the last 50 years, Quebec had a very lucrative support program," said Bowman. "There was money available for clearing land and producing cattle that wasn't available in Ontario. It's gone by the wayside but the farms are already established."

The North's climate...