Trees Are a Crop: Municipal Overreach Into Farming Must End
By Jeff Bogaerts, President – Ontario Landowners Association
For more than 300 years, Ontario farmers have harvested trees as part of ordinary agricultural life. Long before municipal governments existed, long before zoning, long before environmental policy frameworks, farmers managed woodlots, cleared fencerows, maintained drainage, and harvested timber for fuel, tools, buildings, syrup, and income. Tree harvesting was not a separate industry — it was a Normal Farm Practice, woven directly into the fabric of rural life.
Today, however, municipalities across Ontario are passing treecutting bylaws that reach far beyond their lawful authority. What began as urban canopy protection has quietly expanded into a system where farmers — the very people who have stewarded this land for generations — are being told they must seek permission to harvest trees on their own farms.
Let’s be clear:
This is not environmental stewardship. This is government interference in agriculture.
And it must stop.
1. Trees Are a Crop — A 300Year Agricultural Reality
One of the most damaging misconceptions in modern municipal policy is the belief that cutting a tree is an act of “destruction.” That may be true in an urban park or a subdivision, but it is not true on a farm.
Trees are a crop.
A longrotation crop, but a crop nonetheless.
Farmers grow them, manage them, harvest them, and replant them — exactly as they do with corn, wheat, barley, potatoes, hay, and livestock.
For centuries, Ontario farms relied on trees for:
- firewood
- lumber
- fence posts
- maple syrup
- livestock bedding
- tool handles
- winter income
- medicinal bark (white willow for aspirin)
- nuts (hickory, walnut, butternut, hazelnut, beech)
- teas (cedar, basswood, birch, hemlock)
- furniture stock
- railroad ties
- power and telephone poles
- hockey sticks
- baseball bats
This is not destruction.
This is production.
A harvested tree is no different than a harvested field of corn. Both are converted into value. Both are part of the agricultural economy. Both are Normal Farm Practice.
Municipal bylaws that describe tree harvesting as “injury” or “destruction” reveal a profound misunderstanding of agriculture. On a farm, a harvested tree is not a loss. It is a product.
2. Normal Farm Practice Includes Tree Harvesting
Ontario law recognizes that farming is different. It is dynamic, seasonal, weatherdependent, and rooted in local knowledge. That is why the Farming and Food Production Protection Act, 1998 (FFPPA) protects Normal Farm Practice from municipal interference.
Normal Farm Practice includes:
- woodlot management
- selective harvesting
- drainage maintenance
- access route creation
- shelterbelt management
- removal of hazard trees
- clearing for crops or livestock
- maintaining fencelines
- harvesting trees for farm use or sale
These are not optional activities. They are essential to the functioning of a farm.
The FFPPA exists because governments — historically and repeatedly — have interfered with farming without understanding its realities. The Act ensures that farmers can continue to operate without being hindered by nuisance complaints or restrictive local bylaws.
Tree harvesting is explicitly part of that protected practice.
3. Municipal Act s.14 — The Legal Kill Switch
The Municipal Act contains one of the most powerful protections available to farmers:
**Section 14(1): Conflict between by-law and statutes, etc.
A bylaw is without effect to the extent that it conflicts with a provincial or federal Act or a regulation made under such an Act; or
an instrument of a legislative nature, including an order, licence or approval, made or issued under a provincial or federal Act or regulation.
And:
**Section 14(2):
Without restricting the generality of subsection (1), there is a conflict between a by-law of a municipality and an Act, regulation or instrument described in that subsection if the by-law frustrates the purpose of the Act, regulation or instrument.
The purpose of the FFPPA is to protect Normal Farm Practice from municipal interference.
So, when a municipality requires a farmer to obtain a permit to:
- harvest trees,
- manage a woodlot,
- clear a fencerow,
- maintain drainage,
- or harvest a tree crop for income, fuel, or materials,
that bylaw is in direct conflict with the FFPPA.
And under section 14:
The bylaw is void to the extent of the conflict.
This is not a grey area.
This is settled law.
Municipalities do not get to redefine farming.
They do not get to regulate Normal Farm Practice.
They do not get to treat farmers as developers.
4. RighttoFarm Protections Exist Across Canada
Ontario is not alone in recognizing the need to protect farming from local interference. Across Canada, provinces have enacted righttofarm legislation, including:
- British Columbia: Farm Practices Protection (Right to Farm) Act
- Alberta: Agricultural Operation Practices Act
- Quebec: Act respecting the protection of agricultural land and agricultural activities
These laws all share the same purpose:
To protect farmers from nuisance complaints and municipal overreach when they are following Normal Farm Practice.
The national agricultural framework reinforces this protection. Federal legislation such as the Farm Income Protection Act and the Safe Food for Canadians Act supports the stability and integrity of farming operations. National Codes of Practice for farm animals, while voluntary, are widely adopted as benchmarks for Normal Farm Practice.
Taken together, these laws form a clear message:
Agriculture is not a municipal experiment. It is a protected, essential activity that sustains the country.
5. Municipal Overreach Is Not Stewardship — It Is Control
Treecutting bylaws were originally designed for:
- subdivisions
- commercial development
- urban canopy protection
- municipal property
They were never intended to regulate farms.
Yet municipalities are increasingly applying these bylaws to farmland, requiring farmers to:
- apply for permits
- pay fees
- wait for approval
- justify ordinary land management
- comply with urban forestry standards
- face penalties for noncompliance
This is not environmental protection.
This is administrative control.
A permit is not neutral. It reverses the presumption of lawful use. Instead of a farmer exercising rights inherent in ownership and protected by provincial law, the farmer must now seek permission from municipal staff who may have no agricultural experience.
This is not stewardship.
This is interference.
6. The Slippery Slope of Incremental Interference
No single bylaw destroys agriculture. Incremental interference does.
- Treecutting permits today
- Drainage approvals tomorrow
- Access restrictions next year
- Noise complaints the year after
- Odour complaints after that
Each step appears manageable in isolation. Together, they create a system in which farmers must ask permission to manage their own land.
Once farming practice becomes subject to routine municipal approval, the line between regulation and control disappears.
7. TreeCutting Permits as Expropriation
A New Legal Frontier — And a Dangerous One
Municipalities often describe treecutting permits as harmless administrative tools — a simple form, a small fee, a routine approval. But on farmland, a permit requirement is not neutral. It is not minor. And it is not harmless.
A permit is a transfer of control.
It shifts decisionmaking authority from the landowner — who owns the land, understands the land, and is responsible for the land — to the municipality, which neither owns the land nor bears the consequences of its decisions.
In law and in practice, this is a form of regulatory expropriation.
Expropriation does not always involve bulldozers, survey stakes, or formal takings. It can occur quietly, through regulation, when government:
- removes the landowner’s ability to use their property,
- imposes conditions on ordinary use,
- requires permission for longstanding practices, or
- transfers practical control without compensation.
Treecutting bylaws do exactly that.
When a municipality requires a farmer to obtain a permit before harvesting a tree crop — a crop that has been grown, managed, and harvested on Ontario farms for more than 300 years — the municipality is asserting control without ownership.
Control without ownership is the essence of expropriation.
And when that control is imposed without compensation, it becomes a regulatory taking.
The Supreme Court of Canada confirmed this in Annapolis Group Inc. v. Halifax. The Court held that government can commit de facto expropriation when it removes the landowner’s ability to use their land and confers a corresponding advantage on the government.
A treecutting permit on farmland does exactly that.
It removes the farmer’s right to manage their own land.
It transfers decisionmaking to the municipality.
It interferes with a provincially protected Normal Farm Practice.
It confers control to the municipality without compensation.
It frustrates the purpose of the FFPPA.
It violates section 14 of the Municipal Act.
It is expropriation by permit.
This is not stewardship.
This is not environmental protection.
This is not lawful regulation.
This is a taking.
8. History Shows What Happens When Government Interferes With Farming
History offers clear warnings about the dangers of centralized control over agriculture. Across the world, governments that attempted to regulate farming from a distance — without understanding local conditions — produced devastating results:
- crop failures
- food shortages
- loss of resilience
- collapse of local knowledge
- longterm damage to rural communities
The lesson is not ideological.
It is practical.
Farming cannot be micromanaged by distant authorities.
When government replaces local judgment with bureaucratic control, food systems become fragile. Municipal treecutting bylaws may appear minor, but they reflect the same slippery slope: once government begins dictating how farmers must manage their land, the consequences — intended or not — can be profound.
9. Food Security Is Not Optional
Food production is not a policy preference.
It is a necessity of life.
Municipal governments exist to support communities, not to undermine the systems that sustain them. When municipalities interfere with Normal Farm Practice, they are not protecting the environment — they are weakening the foundation of food security.
Trees are part of that foundation. They are a crop. They are a resource. They are a component of integrated farming systems that have sustained Ontario for centuries.
Interfering with tree harvesting is interfering with food production.
Trees Are a Crop, Farming Is Protected, and Municipal Overreach Must End
Treecutting bylaws are not simply about trees. When applied to farmland, they become instruments of interference in food production.
Normal Farm Practice exists because governments, historically and repeatedly, have demonstrated that centralized control is illsuited to agriculture. That lesson should not be forgotten.
Ontario’s farmers have harvested trees for 300 years. They will continue to do so — not because it is convenient, but because it is necessary. Trees are a crop. Farming is a protected activity. And municipal overreach into Normal Farm Practice is not stewardship. It is interference.
The Ontario Landowners Association will continue to defend farmers, protect Normal Farm Practice, and ensure that municipal governments respect the limits of their authority.
Because when government interferes with farming, the consequences reach far beyond the farm gate.
… “if you do not know what your property rights are … you have no property rights …”