From Mixed Farms to Regeneration: Reviving Ontario’s Biodiverse Countryside

This essay argues that Ontario’s biodiversity crisis can only be reversed by transforming farmland into regenerative landscapes that merge production and habitat. It traces how Indigenous stewardship, mixed farming, and modern regenerative practices together form a continuum capable of restoring ecological function across the countryside. This is the basis for collaboration between conservation and progressive agriculture groups.

I. The Shrinking Mosaic

Southern Ontario once formed one of North America’s most intricate temperate ecosystems—a patchwork of tall-grass prairie, oak savanna, wetland, and mixed forest. Today, barely five percent of that living mosaic remains. Over 270 species are formally listed as at risk in Ontario, and roughly four-fifths of them inhabit the Mixedwood Plains—the very zone that became Canada’s agricultural heartland (Environment and Climate Change Canada [ECCC], 2021). For decades, conservation has focused on creating protected parks and reserves, yet the province’s biodiversity crisis persists. The uncomfortable truth is that the fate of most species now depends on the way we farm.

The argument of this essay is simple but radical: the landscapes that settlers once cultivated by necessity—small mixed farms stitched together by hedgerows, woodlots, and wetlands—accidentally preserved much of Ontario’s ecological function. Regenerative agriculture can now rebuild that function deliberately, turning production landscapes into the backbone of biodiversity recovery.

II. Co-evolution: Indigenous Land Care and the Ecology of Abundance

Long before European settlement, Anishinaabe, Haudenosaunee, and Wendat peoples shaped the Great Lakes basin through what scholars now term “cultural burning” and reciprocal harvesting (Anderson, 2005; Kimmerer, 2013). Seasonal fire maintained open savannas and prairie clearings; hunting and selective foraging guided wildlife populations; and small-scale agriculture of corn, beans, and squash thrived in rotation with wild plant communities (Turner, 2014). Rather than suppressing disturbance, Indigenous stewardship channeled it—sustaining high habitat heterogeneity across the landscape (Trant et al., 2016).

Many of the species now endangered—Bobolink, Eastern Meadowlark, Blanding’s Turtle—evolved under precisely those disturbance cycles. Fire, grazing, and flood created the shifting patchwork they required. Human presence was integral, not destructive. When colonization displaced Indigenous management, this ecological choreography began to unravel.

 III. The Mixed Farming Legacy: Europe’s Accidental Conservation System

Nineteenth-century settlers clearing forest for survival did not intend to conserve nature, yet their mixed farming practices reproduced many of the same ecological functions. Crop-livestock rotations, hay meadows, pasture, and managed woodlots created a living patchwork resembling a natural savanna matrix. Fencerows and windbreaks served as hedgerows; manure returned organic matter to soils; wetlands were valued for livestock watering.

Historical farm surveys in Grey, Perth, and Prince Edward Counties show that over 30 percent of farmland remained in semi-natural cover until the mid-twentieth century (Varty, 2019). Birds and pollinators thrived. The Bobolink, for example, adapted seamlessly to hayfields cut after nesting, while Eastern Meadowlarks used lightly grazed pasture as surrogate prairie (Benton, Vickery, & Wilson, 2003). Mixed farms thus acted as ecological middle ground between wilderness and urbanization—a countryside where economic necessity maintained ecological diversity.

IV. The Great Simplification: Industrial Agriculture and Habitat Collapse

After 1950, the rise of chemical fertilizers, mechanization, and drainage tile transformed Ontario’s patchwork into a geometric grid of monocultures. Field enlargement removed fencerows; wetlands were drained; livestock confined indoors. Between 1951 and 2016, the number of farms fell by two-thirds while average field size tripled (Statistics Canada, 2017). This process is hyper-accelerating in recent years, as a generation of farmers is retiring and selling their land. Meanwhile, ethanol and feedlot agriculture drives ever-larger corporate entities to consolidate farmland. This simplification is destroying structure as we speak, the very attribute on which biodiversity depends (Fahrig et al., 2015).

Grassland birds have declined by more than 70 percent since 1970 (North American Bird Conservation Initiative Canada [NABCI], 2019). Pollinator biomass in agricultural regions has dropped by roughly half. Amphibians that relied on farm ponds lost breeding habitat through drainage or pesticide drift. The transformation was not only biological but philosophical: land became a machine whose outputs were measured only in tonnes and dollars. The living soil—once a web of fungi, insects, and roots—was redefined as a mineral substrate that needs chemistry to support crop growth.

V. The Surviving Remnants: Why Mixed Farming Still Matters

Despite industrial consolidation, remnants of mixed farming persist, especially in rolling moraine landscapes where topography limited mechanization. These farms now function as refugia and corridors within an otherwise sterile matrix. Research across the Mixedwood Plains shows that even small woodlots and hedgerows can host half the pollinator species found in intact reserves (Francis et al., 2019). Rotationally grazed pastures maintain higher soil carbon and microbial diversity than nearby annual cropland (Lal, 2020). For many at-risk species, such farms are not marginal—they are indispensable. Bats roost in barn rafters; meadowlarks nest among cattle; turtles lay eggs on sun-baked field edges. In ecological terms, these are “working-land refuges.” In cultural terms, they are the last visible link to a rural ethic that once balanced productivity with stewardship.

The biodiversity supported by Ontario’s mixed farming landscapes spans nearly every major animal group. Grassland and edge birds are the most visible: Bobolink, Eastern Meadowlark, Barn Swallow, Loggerhead Shrike, and Red-headed Woodpecker all depend on pastures, hayfields, and open woodlots. Shrubland and savanna birds such as Brown Thrasher, Field Sparrow, and Eastern Towhee nest where grazing and mowing maintain semi-open cover. Nocturnal aerial insectivores—Common Nighthawk and Chimney Swift—forage over mixed fields and farmsteads.

Among insects, the Monarch Butterfly is iconic, but lesser-known species such as the Rusty-patched Bumble Bee, Yellow-banded Bumble Bee, and Mottled Duskywing rely on diverse flowering strips, hedgerows, and undisturbed nesting sites. These invertebrates in turn sustain higher trophic levels: bats such as the Little Brown Myotis and Northern Long-eared Myotis feed on their abundance at night.

Reptiles and amphibians form another guild of farmland associates. Blanding’s Turtle, Snapping Turtle, and Eastern Hog-nosed Snake depend on wetland–upland mosaics and sandy soils. Amphibians like the Western Chorus Frog and Spring Peeper thrive in shallow farm ponds and drainage depressions restored through regenerative hydrology. Even mammals—Meadow Voles, Eastern Cottontails, Coyotes, and Red Foxes—use the patchwork of pasture and woodlot as foraging corridors that support larger ecological food webs.

Yet not all species at risk in Ontario depend on human-modified landscapes. Forest-interior specialists such as Cerulean Warbler and Jefferson Salamander require closed, undisturbed forest canopies, while others inhabit rare systems like the alvar grasslands of Manitoulin Island, home to Hill’s Thistle and Five-lined Skink. The challenge is therefore not to convert all farmland into semi-open habitat, but to balance mosaics of open and closed ecosystems across regions. Regenerative agriculture is one piece in a wider conservation puzzle that includes intact forests, wetlands, and unique geological habitats.

VI. The Surviving Remnants: Why Mixed Farming Still Matters

Despite industrial consolidation, remnants of mixed farming persist, especially in rolling moraine landscapes where topography limited mechanization. These farms now function as refugia and corridors within an otherwise sterile matrix. Research across the Mixedwood Plains shows that even small woodlots and hedgerows can host half the pollinator species found in intact reserves (Francis et al., 2019). Rotationally grazed pastures maintain higher soil carbon and microbial diversity than nearby annual cropland (Lal, 2020).

Table 1. From an ecological network perspective, many guilds of species depend on a mixed farming/mosaic landscape that allows for species movement and coexistence:

For many at-risk species, such farms are not marginal—they are indispensable. Bats roost in barn rafters; meadowlarks nest among cattle; turtles lay eggs on sun-baked field edges. In ecological terms, these are “working-land refuges.” In cultural terms, they are the last visible link to a rural ethic that once balanced productivity with stewardship.

VII. Regenerative Agriculture: Turning Production into Habitat

1. Principles and Processes

Regenerative agriculture operationalizes five core soil-health principles (USDA NRCS, 2018): keep the soil covered, maintain living roots, minimize disturbance, maximize diversity, and integrate livestock. Each principle re-creates ecological niches that industrial farming erased.

• Living roots year-round provide food for soil microbes, sustaining invertebrate and fungal populations that underpin terrestrial food webs (Wall et al., 2015).
• Reduced tillage preserves micro-topography and nesting habitat for ground-dwelling bees and beetles (Nichols et al., 2020).
• Crop diversity and intercropping mimic natural plant succession, supporting continuous floral resources for pollinators (Garibaldi et al., 2020).
• Managed rotational grazing replaces mechanical disturbance with biological cycles—hoof action aerates soil, manure adds nutrients, and vegetation mosaics re-emerge (Teague & Barnes, 2017).
• Agroforestry and hedgerow regeneration restore vertical structure, perches for birds, and shade corridors for bats (Schulte et al., 2017).

Collectively, these changes transform farmland from a flat plane into a living three-dimensional habitat.

2. Evidence of Ecological Gains

Empirical results are accumulating. In a meta-analysis of 56 studies, regenerative and organic systems averaged 30 percent higher species richness of above-ground fauna and 40 percent greater soil microbial diversity than conventional controls (Gagic et al., 2017). Bird counts on rotationally grazed Ontario pastures record triple the fledging success of Bobolink compared with intensively cut hayfields (OMAFRA Field Study, 2021), while modern cropland offers no bird nesting habitat at all. Pollinator abundance in cover-cropped fields exceeds that of bare fall fields by a factor of five (Blaauw & Isaacs, 2014). Importantly, these benefits occur within production systems, expanding habitat without removing land from economic use – the type of farming use changes.

3. Climate and Hydrological Synergies

Regenerative practices also rebuild the biophysical foundations of resilience. Increasing soil organic carbon by 1 percent boosts water infiltration by roughly 20,000 litres per hectare (Montgomery & Biklé, 2017). On Ontario’s clay-loam soils, that translates into both drought resistance and reduced runoff—a direct win for aquatic species such as Redside Dace (Clinostomus elongatus), which require clear, shaded headwaters (ECCC, 2021). Thus, habitat restoration and climate adaptation become two sides of the same regenerative process.

Beyond soil and plants, regenerative hydrology can also draw inspiration from beaver landscapes. Historically, cascades of beaver ponds regulated water flow in landscapes, creating mosaics of wetlands and maintaining the small water cycle by increasing local evaporation and rainfall recycling (Westbrook et al., 2020). On modern farms, stormwater ponds and restored drainage ditches could mimic this function, capturing runoff, recharging groundwater, and reducing flash flooding. These water-retaining features expand breeding and feeding grounds for amphibians and waterfowl while buffering extreme weather events. In this sense, regenerative agriculture restores not only soil health but also the atmospheric feedbacks that keep a landscape hydrated and resilient.

VIII. Scaling Up: Regeneration as Policy and Economy

The obstacle is not technical but institutional. Canada’s agricultural policy still rewards yield and acreage, not ecological function.  In Europe, results-based agri-environment schemes have doubled farmland bird indices in two decades (Batáry et al., 2015).

Much more discussion is needed how a viable policy path for Ontario and Canada, which targets and supports biodiversity on farmland, could look like. Individual cost share programs, or small-scale ecosystem payment mechanisms, already demonstrate how. Programs such as ALUS Canada demonstrate that paying for outcomes—soil carbon, bird nests, pollinator counts—can redirect management on farms. However, a more cohesive regenerative framework is necessary to replicate these pilot-scaled projects and benefit landscapes at scale. A regenerative framework could integrate:

1. Outcome-based incentives tied to biodiversity and soil metrics;
2. Credit, insurance or financial recognition for ecosystem-service performance;
3. Regional corridor planning linking regenerative farms into continuous “working-land reserves.”
4. Watershed features like agricultural stormwater retention ponds could restore a “beaver landscape” that keeps water on the land.

Land trusts already provide one pathway for this integration. These organizations increasingly hold easements or own farms where agricultural production and biodiversity goals align. They can protect species that depend on specific agricultural landscapes—grassland birds, pollinators, and amphibians—by supporting farming systems that recreate those habitats as a charitable purpose. In this way, charitable conservation goals can directly meet farming needs, help young people access land for ecological farming, and enabling joint stewardship models that produce both food and habitat.

Economically, regenerative systems often achieve equal or higher profitability than conventional systems through input savings and premium markets (LaCanne & Lundgren, 2018). When ecological function becomes an asset, habitat expansion bridges charity and sound rural economic development.

IX. Cultural and Ethical Renewal

Regeneration is also moral restoration. Aldo Leopold’s Land Ethic (1949) argued that humans enlarge their community to include soils, waters, and species. Regenerative farmers practice this daily, even if unconsciously. Their fields host abundance rather than extraction; their management embodies reciprocity—a term that echoes both Indigenous philosophy and contemporary systems ecology. In this sense, regenerative agriculture is a modern expression of an ancient worldview: life creates the conditions for more life. It bridges the divide between Indigenous stewardship and Western agronomy, between spirituality and policy.

X. Conclusion – A Living Future for Ontario’s Countryside

Ontario’s biodiversity crisis cannot be solved by fencing off what remains. It demands reintegration—embedding ecological function within the 3.6 million hectares of farmland that define the province’s south. Regenerative agriculture offers the mechanism: it expands habitat through production, restoring the reciprocity between economy and ecology that sustained this land for millennia.

If implemented broadly, regenerative transitions could increase semi-natural cover on farmland by 10–15 percent without reducing yields, effectively doubling the habitat base available to many of the 217 species now imperiled. In doing so, they would also rebuild soils, sequester carbon, and revive rural culture.

Regeneration is the next conservation.
It does not separate people from nature; it invites life back into the fields.

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