Perhaps the biggest threat facing agriculture (conventional and sustainable) in Canada today is loss of agricultural lands through uncontrolled urban sprawl.

	Over 55 per cent of the best agricultural land in Canada lies within a 160-kilometre radius of large urban centres. When cities spread, they do so at the expense of prime agricultural land. - Green Future

Before we can learn what urban sprawl is, we have to learn what urbanization means. Urbanization happens when people decide to move and live in an area. Have you ever played the game “Monopoly®” where you buy houses to put on your property? Well, the process of urbanization is something like that. Over time, people build homes and other structures (e.g. business buildings, community centres, hospitals, schools) in an area so they can live, work and play there. Although the process of urbanization can be carefully planned to minimize environmental impact, sometimes that isn't always the case.

	Southern Ontario has 50 per cent of Canada's prime agricultural land. Ontario loses one square kilometre of this prime agricultural land every day to bulldozers. - Sierra Club of Canada

Urban sprawl is a type of urbanization. However, instead of carefully planning the urbanization process, the area is developed quickly to satisfy the immediate needs of society and has little regard for the environment. Often, urban sprawl takes the space we have here in Canada for granted and builds structures that serve only a few people (e.g. large single-family houses with big yards instead of smaller houses or apartment buildings). As a result of using more space than needed, urban sprawl is rapidly gobbling up prime agricultural land to grow our food. This is a problem because less than 10 per cent of our country is suitable for agriculture, with less than one per cent considered high-quality farmland.