Speculators shouldn’t be allowed to own farmland, the National Farmers Union says
By Diego Flammini
Staff Writer
Farms.com
An ag industry organization gathered in Ottawa Wednesday to lobby the federal government to protect Canadian farmland from investor ownership.
The National Farmers Union wants Canadian farmland to be available to farmers for food production and not to investment corporations to hold and drive up the land’s value.
“Young farmers are already struggling to access affordable farmland,” Jessie MacInnis, NFU’s youth president, told Farms.com. “Putting a ban on investor ownership would help decrease the cost and increase the accessibility for farmland to new farmers.”
NFU’s definition of investors includes pension funds or institutional investors.
“It’s quite broad,” MacInnis said.
MacInnis is a new farmer herself.
She and her sister Rebecca are first-generation farmers. They own and operate Spring Tide Farm in Lunenburg County, N.S., where they grow vegetables and cut flowers.
MacInnis and other NFU members want to ensure farmland is priced for its value related to food production, and not simply available for the highest bidder.
“Farmland prices are no longer linked to productivity or agricultural potential, it’s becoming linked to speculative value,” she said. “This turns the land itself and foundation of our food system into a moneymaking opportunity for absentee landlords.”
Farmland ownership is under provincial jurisdiction, but NFU wants Ottawa to put pressure on the provinces to ban this kind of ownership and to make these bans a condition for accessing business risk management programs.
This trend is occurring mostly in the Prairies, MacInnis said.
Research from the University of Manitoba found “investor ownership of farmland in Saskatchewan was negligible in 2002, but had climbed to nearly one million acres by 2018 – almost 18 times the size of Saskatoon.”
Financial challenges in 2007-08 could’ve played a factor.
A report from the Parkland Institute in Alberta indicates during that time, investors were “searching for more stable places to store their wealth and watch it accumulate,” the report says. “In this context, investment groups and wealthy individuals reassessed farmland’s potential as an asset class and began buying it up in droves.”
Katherine Aske, an NFU member, authored the report.
Removing speculators from the farmland ownership equation helps ensure food production can continue.
“We know there are thousands of farmers who will retire without a succession plan, and new farmers keen on getting into agriculture,” MacInnis said. “If speculators are allowed to buy up all of this farmland and drive up its cost, that barrier prevents new farmers from getting into the industry.”
The NFU’s rally on Parliament Hill runs from 2-4pm ET.