Switzerland will two hold referendums on Sept. 23 — one on giving more state support to farmers and another on introducing more sustainable and animal-friendly agricultural practices.

An early poll has shown widespread support for both ideas, but Economy Minister Johann Schneider-Ammann said the “dangerous” proposals could trigger tariff increases and other reprisals from trading partners.

One of the proposals, called the Fair Food initiative, wants all food in Switzerland to come from sustainable sources and make labelling more exact. It wants to improve animal welfare by banning imports of factory-farmed products and ensure food imports meet higher Swiss standards.

Supporters like the Green Party and Social Democrats argue that consumers, animals, the environment and farmers would all benefit.

The other proposal wants to increase state aid to Swiss farmers, whose numbers have halved since 1985 and three farming businesses close every day.

“At first glance these proposals have stirred the sympathy of many citizens,” Schneider-Ammann told a news conference.

“I am convinced that upon closer examination of the proposals citizens will see they will make food more expensive, reduce choice and lead to more cross-border shopping from Switzerland.”

Agriculture’s contribution to the Swiss economy has fallen from two per cent in 1985 to under one per cent.

Supporters of the Food Sovereignty initiative for increased state help for struggling farmers, including farming groups and NGOs, want more price transparency to give farmers more heft when negotiating with retailers and food processors.

They also want to increase the number of people working in agriculture and impose stronger regulations on imports which could be subject to higher tariffs or even bans if they do not meet Swiss standards.

The government said the demands would lead to higher subsidies or fixed prices, a claim campaigners reject.

“We don’t want more money, we just want to improve the negotiating position of farmers,” said campaign spokesman Rudi Berli. “Many are going bankrupt because the prices they get for their products are less than the costs of production.”

Retaliatory measures

The referendums are being held after farming groups and environmentalists gathered more than 100,000 signatures needed to trigger a vote under Switzerland’s system of direct democracy.

Three quarters of people polled back the proposals, according to a survey by GFS Bern, a market research company.

The government says the proposals would lead to large-scale state intervention, while banning imports could prompt other countries to launch retaliatory tariffs and sanctions.

“Increasing the number of people working in agriculture can be done only with additional intervention by the government, and would come with higher costs. The entrepreneurial freedom of farmers would be endangered and their dependence on the state would be enormously increased,” Schneider-Ammann said.

— John Revill is a Reuters correspondent covering Swiss industry and policy from Zurich.

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Since the Brexit vote, Europe is a mess. The pound is dropping, markets are scrambling, and most are wondering how the political establishment will address what appears to be a constitutional vacuum related to exiting member-states. It just speaks to how ill prepared the union was to such an eventuality.

Yet, the biggest casualty of the Brexit will likely be global trade. Canada may be the one country paying the largest price as the Comprehensive European Trade Agreement (CETA) is still under negotiation and will not be ratified any time soon. With so much uncertainty in agricultural policies CETA is undoubtedly on life support, at best.

CETA is an agreement that emphasizes Canada’s relationship with the EU. With a deal in hand, CETA was Canada’s greatest chance to act as a portal between both continents. The United Kingdom is one of our top food trading partners within the EU, but the potential to increase trade in certain commodities was tangible. The plan had merit. While more pork, beef, maple syrup went one way, more good European cheeses and other dairy products came our way.

Indeed, CETA finally created a critical breach in our highly protectionist supply management system, a system of high tariffs on imports and production quotas. All provinces were highly engaged in these negotiations, offsetting potential backlashes from quota-happy provinces like Quebec and Ontario. Unlike the Trans-Pacific Partnership, the political process which led to the deal was a textbook example. Trading implications were potentially transformational for a nation which has mainly been trade reliant for decades.

Meanwhile, Americans were also pursuing their own deal with Europe. Given the anti-neoliberalism undertones between Clinton and Trump, however, it is unlikely that the U.S. and the EU will sign a deal any time soon. Let’s face it, for Europe, Canada was playing second fiddle to the almighty American market. The fear of being overshadowed by the U.S. was real. CETA became our beacon of hope to outshine our friendly southern neighbours, at least for a little while. It was indeed a great opportunity for us to embrace our newly found status as a genuine trading economy.

Brexit, however, has made the situation much more convoluted for all nations involved, including Canada. First, the EU needs to figure out what it will do with its Common Agricultural Policy (CAP). For agriculture, CAP in Europe is a big deal. It represents over 40 per cent of the entire EU budget. More than 55 per cent of farmer income support in Britain stems from the Common Agricultural Policy, which has been in existence since 1957. So CAP comes with extreme political and fiscal baggage. Since it is leaving the EU, Britain will need to find ways to support how its agriculture industry will move forward, which may end up costing billions. Before thinking about new trade deals, farmers will surely want
to address domestic issues first.

One approach being advocated over the past few days is the Swiss model. In this case, food sovereignty would be the driving force behind most food and agricultural policies. In other words, the more consumption of locally grown commodities the better. Interesting idea for foodies, but such an approach tends to allow less efficient production systems to emerge, while keeping food prices much higher. Food inflation has not been an issue for the U.K. of late, but it could be should it opt for this approach. As an island, populations often mitigate risks differently, meaning the United Kingdom may find such an approach soothing. This, however, would not be good news for Canada.

Interestingly, more than 60 per cent of farmers voted in favour of Brexit. That support was likely galvanized by prohibitive herbicides regulations and restrictive policies related to genetically modified crops. Now that Brexit is a reality it will be interesting to see how the CAP situation will transpire through negotiations between the Brits and the EU.

Essentially though, it will take months, and perhaps years, to settle the CAP situation in the EU. If CETA is ever ratified soon, agricultural issues would likely be left out. Or else, it is as good as dead.

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Even then, it was apparent that there was a lot of work involved in rebranding trade names on very tall buildings, but I had no idea how prophetic that comment was. I had no idea just how many corporate mergers were about to happen, or how few elevators we would have left standing on the Prairie horizon.

Agricore was later overtaken by United Grain Growers to become Agricore United, and swallowed again by Saskatchewan Wheat Pool in 2007 to become Viterra. This month, shareholders will decide whether or not to accept a bid by multinational Glencore to change the corporate banners one more time through an unholy alliance with James Richardson International.

In just 14 years, the western Canadian grain industry has gone from farmer-owned co-operatives to potential foreign corporate control.

Is this the final saga in the tale of elevator identity crisis? Not likely. If you recall back in 2006, it was James Richardson International that began the bidding on Agricore United in an attempt to create Richardson Agricore and that didn’t work. As they say, the show ain’t over till the fat lady sings, and I don’t hear any sopranos in the wings just yet.

Given the federal government’s willingness to sell off Canadian agriculture and castigate the last vestiges of farmer control within the CWB, any blocking of a foreign takeover bid at the federal level is unlikely. Odd that potash needs to be protected as a basic building block of the Canadian food chain, but cereal grains are not.

What does have many industry watchers scratching their heads, however, is the quietness of the big ABCD. Otherwise known as Archer Daniel Midland, Bunge, Cargill and Lois Dreyfus, these four companies control the majority of the grain trade in non-state-controlled areas of the world. How they will react to the corporate wooing of Glencore is yet to be seen, but rest assured that they are paying attention.

Another tenuous link not getting a lot of attention is the connection between fuel and food. The grains being used for ethanol and biofuels may be obvious, what is less obvious is the trail of money being created by oil-producing corporations and the direction global corporate amalgamations is taking us. Viterra’s takeover of Imperial Oil’s Prairie distribution system may have been more than an omen.

The potential for contracted acres to be linked to herbicide and fertilizer purchases as well as point of delivery was already there, and as evidenced by some of Viterra’s contracts, used. We could now see new varieties being linked to fuel supply as well.

Whether we look at pharmaceuticals, herbicides, seed companies, fertilizer companies or grain buyers, it is becoming increasingly obvious that the farmers’ choices are being dominated by a small number of very large and powerful players. Ever since Bill Gates taught the world that the way to riches is by monopolizing markets, not competing, the corporate landscape has been riddled with corporate takeovers and amalgamations.

The question now is just how that will play out on a global scale. Like a corporate game of Risk (I really should have invented that with the Velcro elevator signs), money will determine who wins world dominance. If oil-producing companies are the ones with the money, is it only a matter of time before they purchase the food supply network as well?

Some people will tell you that corporate control of the food chain is a good thing. It will be a lean, mean delivery machine that the old co-ops could not compete against. Others will tell you that it is the beginning of the end for food sovereignty, and that farmers have lost their leverage in the market, which will cost them their share of the profits.

Regardless of where you see yourself on the political scale, I can’t help but wonder where the next generation of corporate executives will come from.

Will the people who believe the market will solve its own problems in the most efficient way possible, still believe that, if our food supply chain is controlled by the OPEC nations?

Makes you wonder just how many of those Velcro signs I could have sold.

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The $231 million dollars earmarked for the large packers as grants would be better to go to farmer organizations as a repayable loan to build regional packing plants. The loan would return to the taxpayer their dollars with interest, and would help a struggling manufacturing sector in Ontario that could retool to build parts required for a farmer-owned industry. This money would build 23 regional packing plants capable of processing 120 head per day in each facility. The plants would need to be on the New Generation Cooperative model.

This would put competition back into the marketplace and a fair price and rate of return on investment to farmers. The social, environmental and economic benefits would be by far greater than the benefit of lining the pocketbooks of the shareholders of the multinationals with taxpayer dollars.

It would revitalize rural Canada and reduce the strain on our environment caused by current agribusiness practices. And it would also encourage Canada’s next generation of farmers to continue in the footsteps of their families.

Canadians want local food. Canadians want food from Canadian family farms. We need to discard the failed agripolicies of the past two decades and invest in farmers and infrastructure required to meet the needs of Canadians.

When you read the platforms of the various parties, they fall short of where Canada needs to go in terms of food safety, security and sovereignty. Canada imports over 50 per cent of its meat, yet we are focusing on exports. If I were to use cowboy logic it would seem to me that we should focus on filling the domestic market before we worry about exporting.

Neil Peacock Sexsmith, Alta.

Please forward letters to Manitoba Co-operator, 1666 Dublin Ave., Winnipeg, R3H 0H1 or Fax: 204-954-1422 or email: news@fbcpublishing.com (subject: To the editor)

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Rural depopulation is the legacy of Britain’s 18th century pursuit of mercantilist dominance of global trade which promoted urbanization as progress but was, in fact, a wrong-headed policy engineered by wealthy elites, according to the authors and editors of the book.

Food Sovereignty, Reconnecting Food, Nature and Communityis a collection of essays written by a wide range of international academics and agrarian activists, launched at the National Farmers Union’s annual convention.

At the book’s launch party, Nettie Wiebe, former president of the NFU and the book’s coeditor, noted the term “food sovereignty” was coined at the 1996 meeting in Mexico of La Via Campesina, an international group representing small farmers, as part of a campaign to combat corporate efforts to take over land, seed, and the global food supply.

Then, a few months later at a major food security summit in Rome, mainstream politicians, scientists, and economists turned that idea into the need to produce “more” food to feed the world’s burgeoning population.

“They said to produce more, we need higher inputs, and more chemicals to produce more bushels per acre. And furthermore, we’ll need GMO seeds,” said Wiebe.

“We in the small-scale farmer/peasant movement said, ‘No, that’s precisely the wrong agenda.’”

Since then, the number of hungry people has grown from 800 million to over one billion, she added.

Charging that the current food system “actively perpetrates destructive environmental, political and social dynamics,” Wiebe said serious discussions of food sovereignty are urgently needed before the struggle over land, resources, and seed for food production heats up in the coming decades.

OUSTED FOR SHEEP

Jim Handy, a professor of history at the University of Saskatchewan, along with student Carla Fehr, penned a chapter on the origin of “the continued faith in industrial agriculture.”

They found it in the “propaganda”

developed in Britain’s 18th’s century enclosure movement, which sought to oust rural farmers from communally held lands in order to create large-scale sheep farms. The land-grab campaign, hatched by Britain’s elites, was needed to supply both wool and labour for the nation’s fledgling industrial, export-oriented textile industry, they said.

“In order to justify this process, they had to make an argument that it was not only necessary, but that it would be beneficial for everybody, including the people driven from the countryside,” said Handy.

The works of an “obscure” economist named Adam Smith, whoseWealth of Nationsargued such hardships were necessary to secure

humanity’s destiny of “universal opulence,” were mated with the dark visions of British scholar Thomas Malthus, who argued that the poor must not be coddled lest they breed too prolifically and outpace the nation’s food supply.

“The process of pushing people from the land would end, and I quote, the ‘almost idiotic wretchedness’ in which those people in the countryside were encased,” said Handy, who is currently working on a book entitledThe Menace of Progress.

Co-author Carla Fehr, whose master’s thesis was based on theEconomistmagazine’s 1843-63 editorial stance, argues in the book that the respected periodical helped make this view “woven” into modern agricultural thought.

In order for backward rural areas to catch up with urban cultural advances, the Economistargued, they must adopt an agricultural model of a “business” undertaken by capitalists, occupying large estates, and guided by scientific principles. Any other form of farming was a waste of soil, it stated.

“I found that theEconomist was a very persuasive and sophisticated force in spreading belief in capitalist agriculture,” said Fehr.

“It did this by arguing that market forces would naturally bring about a capitalist mode of agriculture and migration to the cities. But we know in fact that this process was anything but natural, and in fact, it required government intervention and force.”

Annette Desmarais, an associate professor of International Studies at the University of Regina, and co-editor of the book, introduced chapters on the myth of “agrofuel” sustainability.

“We are in desperate need of alternatives like food sovereignty, if we care about the health of the planet and humanity,” said Desmarais.

Other chapters discuss ways to dramatically increase yields using “agro-ecological practices,” and another addresses the need for “open-source biology” to avoid market dominance by corporate patented seed.

Food Sovereigntyis the first in a series, with a second book focused on food sovereignty in Canadian agriculture scheduled to be released next fall.

daniel. winters @ fbcpublishing.com

———

“Weinthesmall-scalefarmer/peasantmovementsaid,‘No,that’spreciselythewrongagenda.’”

– NETTIE WIEBE

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The government took foreign investors by surprise, announcing a national audit of foreign ownership of farms and food production businesses, saying it wanted to get to the truth behind public concerns about rising foreign ownership.

The influential Greens party, whose support is crucial to the minority government’s survival, has welcomed the audit and called on the government to develop a “food sovereignty” policy to resist a trend toward foreign control of farmland and water.

“There are clear moves by some countries to secure their own food supplies by buying up land and water in other countries, bypassing trade altogether in favour of a simple outsourcing arrangement,” Greens Senator Christine Milne said.

“Australia has a key role to play in the region as a source of good quality food and we must avoid this trend.”

The National Farmer’s Federation also welcomed the audit, echoing the call for Australia to have security over its own farm sector, but it acknowledged that foreign capital was important for development of rural industries.

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For Terence Sibanda, it’s seed for farmers in Zimbabwe to grow their own crops instead of relying on food aid.

Food justice means different things to different people, as speakers at an Oct. 16 World Food Day event in Winnipeg showed.

But all agreed food justice is about the ability of people to control their own food destiny, whether at home or abroad.

Food justice in action was the theme of 10 short presentations at the event sponsored by the Canadian Foodgrains Bank and the Manitoba Alternative Food Research Alliance.

EXPENSIVE SPUDS

Koenig, representing Food Matters Manitoba, described how people in remote northern communities sometimes have to travel two days to get to a grocery store, where a 10-pound bag of potatoes can cost between $17 and $27.

Instead of being hostage to high prices, locals are starting to grow their own food. Koenig said she witnessed over 80 community garden projects in 13 northern Manitoba communities which produce vegetables, despite poor soil and a short growing season.

Sibanda, a Zimbabwean working on a one-year term with the food grains bank, said most farmers in his country are smallholders with only basic tools and low self-esteem.

But they are also resourceful and can feed themselves and each other, given the proper resources, he said.

EMPOWERMENT

The key is empowerment, Sibanda said. He showed a slide of a Zimbabwean farmer holding a sign saying: “Give me seed to sustain myself. Do not give me food only.”

Carol Thiessen, a food grains bank policy analyst, said food aid provides sustenance, but not a sense of self-worth.

Since food is a human right, people must have the freedom to produce it themselves, Thiessen said.

Here at home, the Manitoba Farm Mentorship Program also offers people a choice to farm, said co-ordinator Sharon Taylor.

It connects on-farm mentors with paid interns to provide would-be farmers with the necessary skills.

The program could be a way to fill the need for more farmers in Manitoba, where 50 per cent of producers are nearing retirement age, Taylor said.

FEWER FARMERS

Besides getting older, farmers are also becoming fewer in number. Gary Martens, who teaches agriculture at the University of Manitoba, said in his home district of Kleefeld in southeastern Manitoba, there are 22 farms at present. Twenty years ago, there were 50.

The loss of farmers and the industrialization of the food chain threaten Canada’s food sovereignty, speakers warned.

A grassroots movement called the People’s Food Policy Project is trying to develop a national food policy for governments to adopt. Organizers are holding local meetings across Canada this month to obtain public input. A national food conference will be held in Montreal in late November.

Ray Vander Zaag, who teaches international development at Canadian Mennonite University, said world food security is slowly getting better, with less food aid happening around the world and international organizations investing more money in agricultural research.

Later, Vander Zaag said a growing interest in local food production shows an increased awareness of the importance of food sustainability. ron@fbcpublishing.com

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Allen, the party’s food safety critic, presented a bill to the Commons Oct. 7 to authorize the change. It was welcomed by members of the other parties as well as the Canadian Federation of Agriculture and the National Farmers Union.

“It’s an opportunity to thank farmers who work every day to feed us,” says Allen, who represents the Ontario riding of Welland. “It would bring into focus the contribution that local and regional agriculture makes to our country and would encourage consumers to purchase locally grown products and ask their grocery stores to stock them.

“When we buy from our neighbours, Canadians are not only supporting local farmers and food producers, but are helping the environment by reducing travel distances, revitalizing local economies and embracing a healthier lifestyle,” he told reporters.

“From the farmer’s point of view, every day could be considered a local food day. Farm leaders certainly appreciate all activities to raise awareness of their efforts to deliver fresh, quality products to communities across Canada,” said CFA president Ron Bonnett.

Whether it’s local, regional or national, choosing Canadiangrown food is crucial.

The CFA proposed a nationally recognized Local Food Day two years ago.

Bonnett said he hoped all parties would support Allen’s motion when it comes up for debate so there’s a special day to recognize the contributions that farmers make to Canada.

Colleen Ross, NFU Ontario and National board member, said her group has worked to advance food sovereignty in Canada. “Many of our members are already establishing strong networks and mutually beneficial relationships between themselves and consumers. A National Local Food Day is an excellent way for all Canadians to begin thinking about what they put in their shopping carts and onto their plates.”

The biggest impediment to helping consumers pick Canadian food is the government’s Product of Canada label rules that have discouraged Canadian companies from even trying to market such products, she said.

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While there may be some accurate points in Ronald L. Doering’s recent articleManitoba Co-operatorOct. 7 article regarding “locavores,” energy consumption of production, processing and preparing of certain foods and how it outweighs transportation of food, you cannot make the subject so “simplistic” that it applies to all food.

For example, when bringing in garlic from China, are we sure that the potash used to fertilize the fields there is not first brought in from Canada and then shipped back to us as garlic? Does this not increase the energy consumption of this food unknowingly?

Anyone who thinks that, as Doering puts it, “no region in this country could begin to provide the broad range of food products that we need to meet our nutritional requirements,” is simply off their rocker.

Many people can and do meet more than their nutritional requirements in their areas. My husband and myself are two such people. The settlers who made it here in Manitoba; they made it by providing their own food – chicken, pork, fish, dairy, fruit, vegetables. Ask anyone who lived in a small town or a farm in the ’40s or ’50s! They rarely had any imported fruits – maybe once a year for a treat – and were certainly not starving or malnourished.

Thirdly, I would like to comment that eating local is possible for the entire year in most areas of this country. To do this you must procure food in season and preserve it yourself, which is possible and done by many people. Purchasing food from the grocery store, is for the most part something we do because we want something, not because we need it.

We want the convenience, or we want the boxed cereal or the chocolate. Eating locally is a lifestyle choice and many people may not want to go to the “extra trouble,” but some can and do. And frankly it’s not that much trouble.

To sum up, although I agree with some of the statements made by Doering, blanket statements are rarely the whole truth. Things aren’t always what they seem.

Anne Bachewich Sandy Lake, Man. average) as the attention grabber. But there’s so much more.

More of us desire the freshest, healthiest, easiest-to-identify food around us – and not only in summer. Searching out local food, supporting regional farmers, encouraging the next generation of smaller-scale farmers and visualizing, and thereby caring for, the very soil our food is grown in, isn’t the whole picture either.

It may take less energy to grow tomatoes in Spain than in England, but it’s not that simple. When droughts hit, or pandemics close airports or when listeria breaks out (again and again) we want to ensure that our basic need for healthy food is satisfied. Food scares have not been coming from our neighbours’ farms.

Yes, people in Guatemala depend on us buying, and transporting at great distance, bananas in winter. But have you seen the living conditions our “first world” Industrial Food Giants have helped create? Our willingness to pay for those bananas has resulted in indigenous people losing both land and the freedom to grow their own food. The message I hear imbedded in local food initiatives is that of food security and food sovereignty for all.

It’s not the oversimplification or the patronizing tone or even the derisiveness of Mr. Doering’s argument I find most troubling. It’s his attachment to a faith in the industrial food system. It’s odd to hear him assert that “No region in this country could even begin to provide the broad range of food products that we need to meet our nutritional requirements.” The system we now have is only, what, 200 years old?

Yes, those of us who can afford the transportation and armies do benefit from increased diversity, but along with that selection we get a system that encourages the denaturing of our soils and food-like products that increasingly fall

Minimal loss of agricultural land

I understand questions have been raised about the impact of building Manitoba Hydro’s new bipole transmission line on agricultural lands. To help answer questions, Manitoba Hydro has invited all landowners within a half-mile of the preliminary route to Landowner Information Sessions this fall. Hydro will also be providing information at community open houses. Dates and locations of the open houses can be found at www.hydro.mb.ca or by calling the Bipole III information line at: 1-877-343-1631.

The route for Bipole III has been carefully developed to minimize impacts on agricultural lands. Diagonal crossings will be avoided where possible and the line will run along roadways and half-mile lines. Landowners will be able to continue farming the land under the transmission line as they have prior to any towers being erected and still will be able to aerial spray their crops as they do now, all the while being eligible for easement compensation. In total, only 37 acres of cultivated agricultural land will be taken out of production.

Manitoba Hydro is offering a package of as much as 135 per cent of market value for a 66-metre-wide easement, loss of production and changes to farming practices. In addition, from $5,000 to $23,000 will be offered for transmission towers, based on current land use.

Hugh McFadyen and the Conservatives play a dangerous game when they claim that if elected they will completely reverse work on Bipole III and force it down the east side despite local and international opposition. Such a reckless move would face legal challenges, grind the entire project to a halt, risk the reliability of our power supply and threaten billions of dollars of Hydro exports that keep our rates the lowest in the country. When Hugh McFadyen’s Conservatives were in government in the 1990s they knew about the need for Bipole III, but did nothing.

We will not roll the dice on Manitoba’s future in this way. We are moving forward to build Manitoba Hydro’s Bipole III transmission line to ensure the continued reliability of our power supply and to provide capacity for future exports to the U. S. and Western Canada of clean, renewable energy that keep our Hydro rates low.

Rosann Wowchuk, Minister Responsible for Manitoba Hydro an insult. There is no adequate compensation. To bribe municipalities with yearly funding is a further insult. It is landowners, not municipalities who are inconvenienced.

Thirdly, I am alarmed and also vehemently opposed to suggesting a route that is approximately 500 km longer, resulting in an additional cost of more than $1.6 billion. For Manitoba Hydro, currently operating at a loss, to ignore the eastern route which it prefers, is totally irresponsible and shockingly poor financial planning. I am appalled at the additional cost of this western route and expected cost overrun. The compiling cost of voltage loss, which would also exceed a billion dollars, would be an additional burden to the Manitoba taxpayer.

Your government is insisting on “finding the best western route” with total disregard for prime agricultural land.

The “eastern route is viable” I’ve been told. It is also shorter, safer, less costly, more environmentally friendly and has a reduced impact on people, livestock and agricultural land.

Do the right and responsible thing.

Louise Neufeld Tourond, Man.

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“We may be on the verge of a new system wherein those who work the land do not own it – a situation that would look familiar and comforting to a 13th century lord,” the NFU says in its report “How a Corporate Farmland Buy-up, Rising Farm Debt, and Agribusiness Financing of Inputs Threaten Family Farms and Food Sovereignty or Serfdom 2.0.”

The report, released June 7, lists 10 examples of agribusiness and investment corporations, buying Canadian farmland. And some companies are doing it with loans from Farm Credit Canada (FCC), as well as with the technical assistance and encouragement of the federal and provincial governments.

The report recommends only residents of a province be able to own farmland in that province.

It also recommends:

Differential land taxes to discourage corporate investment and to encourage family farms;

Assistance for intergeneration land transfer;

Prevent farmland from being used for non-agricultural purposes;

Governments must deal with the farm debt time bomb;

Ban farm input suppliers from tying financing to delivery contracts.

There are two main models for farmland ownership. In one, land is broadly owned by farmers. In the other it’s concentrated in the hands of an elite and those who work the land are sharecroppers and serfs.

“Canada has, until recently, embraced the first model,” NFU president Terry Boehm said in a news release. “But a corporate and investor farmland buy-up means that we may be in the opening stages of a rapid move to the latter model. Unless we act, our land may soon be owned by modern-day lords and barons, with disastrous consequences for all Canadians.”

According to the report, Assiniboia Capital Corporation is the largest farmland investment company in Canada with almost 100,000 acres under its management. FCC is its largest financier.

Other corporate land buy-e rs include Bonnefield Financial, Agcapita and Walton International.

“On the one hand, the idea that the global elite might buy up the planet’s foodland may seem like conspiracy theory,” the report says “But for companies such as Bonnefield and many others, that idea is something else: a business model.”

There’s little data on how much Canadian farmland is owned by investment corporations.

British Columbia, Ontario and New Brunswick have no restriction on who can own farmland in their provinces, including foreign individuals or corporations.

Manitoba, Alberta and Saskatchewan restrict foreign ownership to 20, 10 and 40 acres, respectively.

Prince Edward Island limits corporations to owning no more than 3,000 farmable acres. The Lands Protection Act, which the NFU sites as a model, also restricts ownership by non-Canadians and non-Islanders.

“If corporations or wealthy investors take control of our land and farms, our food systems and ecosystems will be seriously damaged,” the report says.

Canadian farm debt has ballooned to an estimated $64 billion – doubling since 1997 – and is growing by $2.7 billion a year. According to the NFU that’s a reflection of a lack of net farm income.

Heavily indebted farmers have fewer options making corporate investment more appealing, the report says. But the result is less farmer autonomy. allan@fbcpublishing.com

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