SHELBURNE–It has been three years since John Lowndes began quietly approaching landowners in and around Melancthon Township, an idyllic stretch of rolling fields radiating out from the town of Shelburne, north of Orangeville.

He worked his way through the area's numerous potato farms, generally offering to buy the properties at $8,000 per acre, above market value. Throughout, he touted a vision of becoming the province's largest potato grower.

Since then, under the banner of the Highland Companies, he has accomplished that goal, acquiring more than half of the roughly 15,000 acres of arable land in the area and a couple of its largest potato farms, Downey's and Wilson's.

Some of Lowndes' new neighbours were suspicious, however, that Highland – backed by a $14 billion hedge fund out of Boston called Baupost Group – wasn't all about potatoes.

Just over a year ago, Highland sent a letter to Melancthon council indicating it planned to "explore additional land uses." Those additional uses included the far more lucrative "crop" of aggregate limestone to be found just a few feet beneath the region's honeywood silt loam soil, prized for agriculture.

That plan has sparked a fight that has split several of the close-knit farming communities that sit atop the Dufferin Highlands, less than 100 kilometres from the GTA.

Some were happy to sell their struggling farms. Others welcomed new investment in the area. But now that Highland has made clear it plans to quarry 2,400 acres of some of Canada's finest farmland, opponents say what is at stake is the most basic stuff of human life: water, food and family heritage.

"Once he started talking quarry, there was no way he was gonna get this place," grumbles local potato and cattle farmer Jim Black, before taking a visiting reporter for a flight over the designated area in his two-seater plane.

"I have six grandchildren – one of them's 19 now, two 15-year-olds – and we've got one here who just can't wait to get farming, so what are we going to tell them later on, our kids? We made a big hole in the ground?"

The water table sits close to the surface on the highlands. In nearby communities such as Horning's Mills, there's a pond or running water seemingly in everyone's backyard. Any large hole in the ground thus troubles locals about their well levels and ability to water and wash their crops.

Sitting on the highest point in Southern Ontario at 1,700 feet above sea level, their lands also border on the headwaters of the Nottawasaga and Grand River systems, meaning any lowering of water levels or water quality at "the Roof of Ontario" could be felt as far away as Hamilton to the south and Georgian Bay to the north.

Last January, a matter of days before Highland made explicit what "additional land uses" it was mulling for its newly acquired properties – wind-power generation, reinstatement of the rail line connecting Orangeville to Owen Sound and, yes, aggregate extraction on 2,400 acres in eight phased operations of 300 acres – some of the holdouts and other concerned residents banded together as the North Dufferin Agricultural and Community Taskforce (NDACT).

Since then, they have amassed 1,200 signatures on a "stop the quarry" petition and relentlessly hounded politicians and environmental groups. They hired an independent planner to assess the consequences for the nearby waterways. They filed complaints about what they claim is illegal tree-clearing on some properties, and they are lobbying the Melancthon, Mulmur and Grey townships to designate their honeywood soils as an "agricultural specialty crop," which has protected the Holland Marsh against development.

"This has totally taken over my life, and I had it just the way I liked it," sighs Dale Rutledge, NDACT's chairman and the proprietor of Rutledge Farms, the second-largest potato grower in the area behind Highland's expanded Downey Potato Farms.

"We may not be able to grow anything other than limestone. We were worried about our well, but now we're worried about the fact that if he drains all of our water or he lets our water go too fast out of the ground, that we've got no water, then, underground to feed our crops ... I'm fighting for my life if that happens."

Rutledge, 61, is currently in business with his sons, Mark and Scott. If his grandchildren take up the trade, six generations of Rutledges will have farmed the fields near Reddickville and Honeywood. The core Rutledge Farms acreage now, however, borders on a vast tract of properties that could soon be turned into 75-metre-deep limestone pit mines. "We're totally surrounded," he says.

Jim Black, too, is stressed by Highland's plans. "It's one thing to talk about growing potatoes ... and everything, but as soon as you start to destroy this land there's nothing left. It'll never come back again."

Black has been one of Highland's most vocal foes, having grown sufficiently fed up with what he sees as duplicitous and strong-armed business tactics to have gone public with his complaints. Other farmers in the area have similar stories – of being given 24-hour deadlines to make decisions about selling, or of $100,000 cheques being surreptitiously left on kitchen tables – but are reluctant to go on the record.

For its part, Highland "categorically denies" that it attempted to bully landowners into selling with 24-hour deadlines and that "any cheque was left in the manner that is seemingly being alleged," says spokesman Michael Daniher.

"The provision of an offer and the provision of any cheques only occurred after a number of meetings and discussions that were held as part of the process resulting in the tabling of an offer. Cheques were, in fact, provided but they were attached – physically attached – to offers that were left with prospective vendors. People had asked John, `How will we know that an offer you bring is sincere?' So the company endeavoured to address that question by providing a cheque ... as indication of a sincere offer and as a down payment."

Black and his wife, Marian, were actually considering selling the farm after a drought-prone stretch when an unfamiliar real-estate agent approached them in September 2006. The Blacks subsequently listed the property for a year with another agent, but there were no takers. They had taken it off the market when the first agent came back with an offer that, Marian says, "he felt we could not refuse."

"The next time, John Lowndes himself comes waltzing in," recalls Marian, who found it odd that someone professing to be intent on buying their farming operation displayed no interest in examining the buildings that came with it. "He says: `I'm here, I'm going to buy your farm, I need to see you right now.' And I said, `I didn't know it was for sale. If it was for sale, there'd be a sign at the end of the road.'"

After their refusals, the Blacks allege, a seed supplier from Saskatchewan called them to say that Lowndes was offering to buy a substantial debt they had accrued during their rough patch.

Jim describes it "as just another way to get control of us ... The seed grower informed us right after (Lowndes) phoned him."

The Highland Companies contend that the reverse was true and the grower actually rang up Lowndes – as the man behind "the leading farm operation in the area" – asking: "Is there anything you can think of or do to help us try and get our money from Mr. Black?"

Lowndes himself does not personally respond to such matters these days. The voice of Highland in most of its public dealings belongs to Daniher, a public-relations pro affiliated with a Toronto company called Special Situations Inc. He has represented the company at several community forums held to discuss its intentions, not to mention "30 of the last 31 meetings of Melancthon council," says Daniher. Lowndes, he adds, has become "increasingly unavailable."

The unfailingly cooperative Daniher takes pains to point out the diversity of Highland's interests in the 9,500 acres – 7,500 in Melancthon Township, 1,000 in Mulmur Township and 1,000 in Norfolk Township – it now owns near Shelburne. Potato farming and aggregate extraction comprise but half of the company's grand scheme.

In promotional materials, Highland touts dreams of a four-tiered business that will include adding its own wind turbines to the many already dotting the horizon west of County Rd. 124 and an eventual relaunch of freight-rail service from Toronto to Orangeville to the Great Lakes port of Owen Sound. Presumably the rail lines would be used to ship aggregate.

Those interests both remain at the "research" stage, says Daniher. "That's a vision we've tried to share with a lot of folks. Some just won't buy it. That's their right. But we're not the ones who've described this in the fiery language they have. We've tried to be fair and reasonable and responsible."

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NDACT and Highland both accuse each other of "misrepresentation." Highland maintains the quarry won't be the 2,400-acre environmental nightmare it's been portrayed as during the long run-up to a yet-to-be-filed application to the province under the Aggregate Resources Act – one that the company said in May would be filed within "three to six months." (Daniher says the company is taking the time to put forward the "best possible proposal.")

"Active" open-pit mining will be restricted to 300 diligently "buffered" acres at a time, he says, and the dug-out land left in its wake will be re-soiled and returned to an arable state.

NDACT's water anxieties should be allayed, says Daniher, by the fact that Highland is, in part, a potato farmer just like them. "As one of the largest landholders and active farmers in this township, water is as important to us as to anyone else...

"The reality is that aggregate quarries in Ontario – of which there are a bunch south of here, in a lot more sensitive land than this – operate below the water table. There are a number of proven solutions that manage water. That's just something that has to be done as part of a quarry and that we have very knowledgeable folks dealing with it."

Since an actual, official proposal to go ahead with the Highland quarry has yet to be tabled, the bodies that have a say in whether it will go ahead – the municipal governments, the provincial ministries of natural resources and the environment, the Ontario Municipal Board and environmental monitoring agencies such as the Nottawasaga Valley and the Grand River Conservation Authorities – have little but cautious comment to offer.

"It's certainly the largest proposal of this nature that we've ever seen or heard of, so certainly we're concerned, and we want to know what sort of impact or effect it's going to have on the environment," says Chris Hibberd, director of planning for the Nottawasaga authority.

Any aggregate extraction conducted below the water table has "large potential for impact," says Hibberd, and the Nottawasaga watershed encompasses a particularly "vast" area wherein the effects on everything from drinking-water supplies to fish and wildlife habitats to wetlands must be closely watched. The Highland Companies will thus be bound to provide "a significant, detailed list of technical studies" demonstrating they've attended to all of these details.

"There is no doubt: we're being told this is a huge application and there's potential for significant issues, so we have to make sure that there's a careful review," says Wayne Wilson, chief administrative officer of the Nottawasaga authority. "The local citizens have made sure that it's an issue that has a high profile."

Not everyone is down on the Highland Companies, mind you.

Over at Downey Potato Farms, Trevor Downey, vice-president of marketing and sales, boasts that while most others are tightening their belts, his operation is investing in new gear and selling more – even growing "exclusive specialty potatoes" for clients likes Loblaws – since Highland bought in.

Downey Potato Farms also now imports from California to keep the potatoes flowing to clients during the months when their competitors' bins are empty. "This is a 12-month operation," says Downey, "which is uncommon in Ontario."

There are other quarries in the Shelburne area, although the largest hover around the 100-acre mark. What's compelling Highland to risk public outcry is the incredible value of the rare Amabel dolostone limestone – a commodity crucial to virtually every road and construction project on the planet – underneath all those potato fields.

According to a formula devised by the Friends of Rural Communities and Environment, a group fighting a quarry in Flamborough, at current market rates the properties are capable of generating more than $18 million an acre in aggregate.

Daniher, who points out that the quarry would create jobs in the community, says Highland is simply offering "a vision of a sustainable future for this community built upon its natural resources."

For the farmers involved in this fight, however, the future doesn't look so sustainable. They see bleak, barren fields stripped of the homes, barns and fence posts that once demarcated family farms. They fret about "rural blockbusting." They've lost friends over the side they've taken – after all, the Highland Companies are now a substantial employer, taxpayer and corporate donor in a township of just 2,800 people; people chattering at local gas stations and chip trucks are careful to avoid letting too much slip, with the phrase "I'm a fence-sitter" coming up often.

"My friends and neighbours that used to be my friends and neighbours, nobody talks to anybody anymore," says Rutledge. "I went to school with these guys, I played hockey with these guys."

Another NDACT draftee, cattle and pig farmer Ralph Armstrong, says he has "lost a lot of sleep" over who's going to sell next, not because of NIMBY-ism at the prospect of a quarry at his back door but because of an erosion of "our own values, of what's important." The Crown deed to his farm is dated 1861.

"Food has been rationed in my lifetime," he says. "It doesn't take much of a hiccup to cause a problem. We're talking about the generations following. It probably doesn't make much difference to me, but where's the good food going to come from if you don't have land to grow it on? What can you leave your grandchildren? Clean air to breathe, pure water to drink and good quality soil, secure, that you can grow food on.

"What else can you leave them that's any more important?"