With the Agricultural Growth Act, known widely as Bill C-18, now having reached royal assent and practically become part of Canadian legislation, Canadian farmers have a lot more reasons to be concerned about their future as farmers, according to a recent report by the National Farmers Union (NFU).
The report “Losing Our Grip-2015 Update” portrays a quite grim picture with regard to corporate interests encroaching on the farming communities of Canada and warns that the currently existing trends could amount to an existential threat for Canadian food sovereignty within a few decades.
“Canadians want family farmers to produce our food and to have the autonomy to do it in a way that supports their communities and takes care of the land for future generations. Without better farm policy and laws with real teeth, absentee landlords seeking to make the highest possible return for their shareholders will be calling the shots, and the work of farming will be done by low-paid seasonal employees or farmers forced to lease land, making it difficult for them to make long-term investments to care for the land,” said Jan Slomp, NFU President in a statement on the occasion of the release of the report. “We are calling for policies, programs and laws that will ensure that Canada’s farmland is under the control of local farmers, which is one of the key elements of food sovereignty.”
The latest publication is actually an update to a major report by the NFU on Canadian agriculture and the challenges it faces which was released in 2010 with the name “Losing Our Grip: How Corporate Farmland Buy-up, Rising Farm Debt, and Agribusiness Financing of Inputs Threaten Family Farms and Food Sovereignty”.
The executive summary of the latest update states that the traditional farming system of Canada, whereby farming land is owned and worked by individual farmers, farmer families or cooperatives “is under serious threat by corporations and investors –including some of our own pension funds – that are seeking greater control over Canada’s agriculture and a bigger share of the wealth that farmers produce.”
The report underlines both demographic and economic trends as feeding into the continuation and acceleration of the phenomenon with younger generations of the farmer families seeking their future in urban communities while the farming land increasingly becomes a commodity rather than a fundamental asset to maintain a way life.
With multinational corporations targeting more and more farming land to operate in order to expand their businesses, including trying new seed breeding technologies, in addition to foreign governments and investment institutions buying up land all around the world, aging farming communities in Canada are fast becoming easy prey to corporate greed, with many older farmers having to sell their farmland when they are unable to meet their debt obligations to creditor institutions, according to the report.
The data published in the report shows Canada’s farming land shrank by seven million acres, or by about 4 per cent, describing this development as a serious threat to Canada’s food sovereignty.
In addition, the rise in the price of farmland over the last decade has been a source of double negative impact: While retiring farmers find it convenient to sell their farmland to new owners who may not always be willing to work the land, the high prices deter many young people from dreaming of buying up their piece of land to launch farming operations.
Rising farm debt
The NFU report also looks at the increasing farm debt and warns that the newly introduced Agricultural Growth Act could play a major part in accelerating the trend in just a few years as farmers will now face the possibility of having to pay fees for their own seed.
The figures quoted in the report show that farm debt has grown by more than 10 per cent in just three years from 2010 to 2013, reaching almost $80 billion.
Unhealthy and “unregulated” lending practices whereby farmers have to receive loans in exchange for future harvests at low fixed prices are also putting great pressure on the borrowers, according to the report.
Recommendations
The main emphasis of the recommendations listed in the executive summary of the report is on the matter of securing the land ownership for Canadian farmers. The report urges a unified set of land ownership framework to be adopted by all the provinces and territories, with adequate taxation arrangements being made to ensure that Canadian ownership of farming land is encouraged.
“The Government of Canada and the provinces must set up mechanisms for farm family intergenerational land transfers that do not rely on loans and interest payments. Governments must find ways for young and new farmers to gain secure access to farmland that does not require massive indebtedness,” the report stresses.
It also urges strict restrictions to the transfer of farming land to non-agricultural use.