Atwood lends her support to a small farming community in Midhurst, Ontario, where citizens are petitioning against transforming Midhurst’s 2,000 acres of farmland into a suburban city. In a statement, Atwood argues

If you’ve got prime farmland, why don’t you use it as prime farmland? It took 13,000 years to build that soil. Once that soil is gone, it’s gone.