On a hot and hazy summer’s day, the Singh family is out in their leek field pulling volunteer pigweed. It’s a menial task, but one that’s familiar to the market gardeners in the Holland Marsh. For second-generation farmer Shane Singh, his story starts with his parents arriving from Guyana with star-bright hopes of a better life. 

On a bitter winter’s day in 1979, the family’s down payment – and faith – was placed in a small, five-acre plot. Since then, the farm has grown to 40 acres on Canal Road that supports Shane, Jennifer, their two children, Lauren and Nathan, as well as Shane’s parents. In many ways, the Singh’s are not unlike the hard-working Dutch immigrants who first reclaimed the vast wetlands of the Holland Marsh in 1925.

The rich muck soil of Shane Singh’s market garden grows leeks, lettuces, and radish, along with herbs such as dill, cilantro and parsley, sold to independent grocers through the Ontario Food Terminal and to local customers through the Bradford Farmers’ Market.   

“For the South American community, we grow bitter melon, flat-leaf spinach and hot peppers,” says Singh. “Other produce includes radicchio, dandelion greens and Swiss chard.”

Shane Singh and his family are emblematic of the many ways in which the Holland Marsh has evolved over the last century. They are the next generation of farmers growing new crops. Looking to the future, Jody Mott, general manager, Holland Marsh Growers’ Association points out that the next decade will be critical for Ontario’s 7,000-acre salad bowl. The area is designated as a specialty crop area within the Greenbelt, and although protected by Greenbelt legislation, responsibilities for care of soil and water weigh heavily on each of the Marsh’s 126 farms. 

Confronted by extreme weather, Holland Marsh growers have experienced seemingly continuous cycles of draining heavy rainfall or irrigating parched fields.

“In rare situations, muck farmers have done both within 24 hours,” chuckles Charlie Lalonde, special projects manager for the Holland Marsh Growers’ Association. He’s looking at second-year results of a three-year project funded by the Clean Water Agency on seven Holland Marsh test sites. Silt socks, stuffed with switchgrass, are used to buffer water draining off the fields while instruments measure the profile and turbidity of nutrients in the drain water. The objective is to determine whether there is excessive phosphorus or nitrogen and, if present, to curb flow into the watersheds that drain into Lake Simcoe. Growers are closely following the project to evaluate the effectiveness of grassed buffers. 

“We’ve had disappointing results in 2025 because it’s been a dry summer,” says Lalonde. “It takes a large rain event to create measurable results.”

On the political side of land stewardship, carrot and onion grower Avia Eek, a Township of King councillor, passionately advocates for the preservation of precious Marsh farmland. In her roles as the chair of the agri-food advisory committee for York Region and a director for the Lake Simcoe Conservation Authority, she’s like the proverbial finger in the dike, holding back the urban flood. She’s quick to point out that 50 acres of farmland have recently been lost to non-farming buyers.  

“We can’t make people farm,” she admits. But farmland can be protected for agricultural use by establishing appropriate by-laws. Currently, to obtain a building permit, owners must show their farm business registration. That requirement alone has prevented construction of at least five non-agricultural buildings on farmland in recent years. But loss of viable farmland is not the only pressing local issue as increased urban traffic on rural roads pits impatient drivers against slow-moving agricultural machinery. 

These issues are all too familiar to Jennifer Best, director of growth services, Bradford West Gwillimbury. Hailing from an agricultural community, she has rural planning in her blood. After just a year on the job, she’s marshalling vested interests from two adjoining townships to harmonize zoning rules under the Greenbelt Plan, itself 20 years young this year.   

Consultations with growers, municipal planners and the local drainage superintendent highlight broad land-use issues, ranging from migrant farm worker housing to residential development to accessory dwelling units to greenhouses. She explains that one of the thorniest issues is to align permits between two municipalities to prevent the start-up of non-agricultural land use.

“The Holland Marsh is a quasi-industrial area that includes processing,” says Best. “We need to evolve or else we will have conflicts.” 

She goes on to point out the unique challenges of the Marsh.  “We have dirt storms, so it gets dusty. We have narrow roads, so we get road rage. We have smells, so that turns off urbanites.” 

To her credit, Best is preparing a proposal for the Bradford West Gwillimbury Council to fund a university intern to research land-use regulation across a range of comparable municipalities. Such data collection would identify by-laws in place in Ontario’s Niagara region or in Delta, British Columbia, for example, other areas of high-density horticulture surrounded by high-density population. 

While that proposal and others work their way through the municipal system, Marsh growers are busy doing what they do best: harvesting, planting cover crops and planning for the generations of farmers to come in the next 100 years.