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Investor ownership or social investment? Changing farmland ownership in

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Agric Hum Values (2017) 34:149–166
DOI 10.1007/s10460-016-9704-5

Investor ownership or social investment? Changing farmland

ownership in Saskatchewan, Canada
Annette Aurélie Desmarais1 • Darrin Qualman2 • André Magnan3 •

Nettie Wiebe4

Accepted: 11 April 2016 / Published online: 23 May 2016

 Springer Science+Business Media Dordrecht 2016

Abstract There is growing recognition that land grabbing is a Keywords Land grabbing
Financialization of land
Land
global phenomenon. In Canada, investors are particularly sovereignty
Saskatchewan farmland
Investor ownership
interested in Saskatchewan farmland, the province where of land
GIS
Land-titling data
Social investment
40 % of country’s agricultural land is situated. This article
examines how the changing political, economic, and legal
context under neoliberalism has shaped patterns of farmland
ownership in Saskatchewan, between 2002 and 2014. Our Abbreviations
research indicates that over this time, the amount of farmland CANSIM Canadian Socio-Economic Information
owned by investors increased 16-fold. Also, the concentration Management system
of farmland ownership is on the rise, with the share of farmland CLO Concentration of Land Ownership by the 4
owned by the largest four private owners increasing six-fold. largest owners
Our methodology addresses some of the criticisms raised in the CPPIB Canadian Pension Plan Investment Board
land grabbing literature. By using land titles data, we identified CR4 Concentration ratio of the largest 4 firms
farmland investors and determined very precisely their land- CUSTA Canada–US Trade Agreement
holdings thus allowing us to provide a fine-grained analysis of GIS Geographic Information Systems
the actual patterns of farmland ownership. Although the article ISC Information Services Corporation
analyzes changes to farmland ownership in a specific histori- LP Limited Partnership
cal, cultural and legislative context, it serves as the basis for a NAFTA North American Free Trade Agreement
broader discussion of the values and priorities that land own- NFU National Farmers Union
ership policies reflect. Namely, we contrast an ‘open for RM Rural Municipalities
business’ approach that prioritizes financial investment to one SAMA Saskatchewan Assessment Management
based on a land sovereignty approach that prioritizes social Agency
investment. The latter has greater potential if the aim is eco- WTO World Trade Organization
logical sustainability and food sovereignty.
Who in the very near future will end up owning Saskatchewan farm lands?
& Annette Aurélie Desmarais The farmer and the family farm unit, or the big land owner and the
commercial corporation, either foreign or domestic? (Kowalchuk 1973,
Annette.desmarais@umanitoba.ca
p. 3083).
1
Department of Sociology, University of Manitoba, 320
Isbister, Winnipeg, MB R3T 2N2, Canada Introduction
2
Box 84, Dundurn, SK SOD 1K0, Canada
3
Department of Sociology and Social Studies, University of In recent years, the politics of farmland ownership have
Regina, Regina, SK S4S 0A2, Canada figured prominently in debates around food security, food
4
St. Andrews College, University of Saskatchewan, sovereignty, rural transformation, and the future of agri-
Box 89, Delisle, SK S0L 0P0, Canada culture. While there is on-going concern about the ‘global

123
150
land grab’ affecting parts of the global South, there is also
increasing interest in changing patterns of farmland own-
ership in the global North. Scholars and civil society
organizations have documented increasing corporate and
financial investment in farmland in countries such as the
US. (Fairbairn 2014a; Mittal and Moore 2014), Australia
(Lawrence and Campbell 2014; Larder et al. 2015; Sippel
2015), the European Union (van der Ploeg et al. 2015), and
Canada (NFU 2015; Sommerville and Magnan 2015;
Magnan 2015), with implications for the structure and
organization of agriculture and for local communities.
These trends have spurred public policy debates about the
financialization of farmland. As domestic and foreign
investors snap up farm properties, the agricultural com-
munity, the financial sector, governments, and interested
publics have weighed in on how farmland ownership
should be regulated, and in whose interests. These debates
are important not only because farmland is the foundation
of agricultural production, but also because farmland is
closely connected to the identity, culture, and economic
security of farming communities and families.
In this article, we examine how the changing political,
economic, and legal context under neoliberalism has
affected patterns of farmland ownership in the province of
Saskatchewan, Canada. As illustrated in the opening quo-
tation, concern about the corporate ownership of farmland
in Saskatchewan is not new. During a strong run-up in
farmland prices in the mid-1970s, the Government of
Saskatchewan restricted farmland ownership to residents of
the province. Farmers’ organizations supported this move,
and concern about outside ownership of farmland subsided
for nearly three decades. The government relaxed owner-
ship restrictions in 2002, however, to allow Canadians
outside the province to own land.
The liberalization of ownership rules opened the door to
out-of-province owners who, beginning in the mid-2000s,
found reason to invest in Saskatchewan farmland. The
province has 40 % of Canada’s agricultural land—some 62
million acres (Statistics Canada 2011)—and while land
prices have increased substantially in recent years, they are
still lower than in neighbouring provinces and much lower
than prices in other industrialized countries such as the
European Union and the USA (Savills 2012). There are a
number of other reasons why Saskatchewan is particularly
appealing: proximity to major markets such as the USA, a
well-developed transportation and grain handling infras-
tructure, a stable political environment, and the size and
productivity of agricultural operations (Sommerville and
Magnan 2015).
Our research shows that, since 2002, out-of-province
individual investors, investment companies, pension plans
and farmer/investor hybrids have purchased large tracts of
farmland. Whereas this trend flew under the radar for
123
A. A. Desmarais et al.
several years, it has recently become more controversial.
Headlines in local and national newspapers—such as ‘‘Are
foreign investors eyeing this pie?’’ ‘‘Investment fund eying
more Sask. Farmland’’, ‘‘Investors keen on Sask. Land’’,
‘‘Pinstripes on the prairies’’, ‘‘Are our pensions retiring the
family farm?’’—captured some elements of the shift in
discourse. Two events further raised the profile of these
trends. First, the Canadian Pension Plan Investment Board
(CPPIB) purchased nearly 115,000 acres of farmland in
2013—the biggest single farmland purchase in the recent
history of the province. Subsequently, a company named
Skyline Agriculture Financial Corporation challenged the
Government of Saskatchewan’s prohibition on foreign
ownership of farmland in a high profile court case. The
legal proceedings are still pending, but the case is signifi-
cant given that the company is ‘‘intent on financing $1
billion in farmland purchases over the next decade’’
(Nickel 2015). While investors have defended their activ-
ities, some political parties, farm organizations, and farm-
ers argued that these big players risked driving up the price
of farmland to unsustainable levels, making it increasingly
difficult for young farmers to enter the sector.
As the controversy gained momentum, the government
of Saskatchewan launched a review of the legislation gov-
erning farmland ownership in 2015. The government con-
sulted the public and interested stakeholders and introduced
a temporary ban on farmland purchases by some investors,
pension plans, and investment trusts (Government of Sas-
katchewan 2015a). Though the government has yet to pass
amended legislation, it has promised to tighten the rules, an
issue we return to in the discussion. Whatever the outcome
of the review, the renewed debate over farmland ownership
rules has important implications for investors, farmers, and
rural communities.
Building on earlier research (Desmarais et al. 2015a, b),
this article addresses two principle research questions.
First, how have farmland ownership patterns changed since
the liberalization of farmland regulations in 2003? Second,
how do farmland ownership regulations under different
policy regimes prioritize social and economic investment
in farmland? We begin by placing the ownership changes
occurring in Saskatchewan within the context of agricul-
tural restructuring and the financialization of farmland.
Next, we present an historical overview of the changes in
legislation governing ownership restrictions in 1974 and
2002. We then explain our research methods and present
our findings on the extent of investor land ownership, the
spatial distribution of investment patterns, and the con-
centration of farmland ownership. In the discussion, we
reflect on our empirical findings by discussing how farm-
land ownership regulations represent different ways of
valuing the connections between people, farmland, and
food production.
Investor ownership or social investment? Changing farmland ownership in Saskatchewan, Canada
Theoretical context: neoliberal restructuring,
financialization, and land sovereignty
Scholars have documented the neoliberal restructuring of
agriculture at regional, national, and global scales for
several decades (Bonanno et al. 1994; McMichael 1994;
Wolf and Bonanno 2014). The Canadian agricultural sector
has undergone its own neoliberal transformation. Begin-
ning in the late 1960s, Canadian governments began seri-
ously to call into question the state-supported model of
agricultural development, which had supported the
preservation of family farms as a policy goal in the post-
war years (Knuttila 2003; Wiebe and Wipf 2011). In the
prairie region, including Saskatchewan, neoliberal
restructuring began in earnest during the 1980s, when the
federal government began dismantling the system of
statutory grain transportation rates, known as the Crow
Rate, considered a crucial support to the grain exporting
economy.1 In the early 1990s, federal and provincial gov-
ernments slashed agricultural spending and restructured
farm programs including price and income stabilization
programs (Skogstad 2008).2 As Canada signed onto free
trade agreements such as the Canada–US Trade Agreement
(CUSTA), the North American Free Trade Agreement
(NAFTA) and the World Trade Organization’s (WTO)
Agreement on Agriculture, agricultural supports were fur-
ther weakened in the name of accessing new export mar-
kets. More recently, the federal Conservative government
dismantled Canada’s farmer-controlled grain marketing
agency, the Canadian Wheat Board (Magnan 2014),
weakening farmers’ negotiating power in the world market,
undermining Canada’s reputation for grain quality, and
contributing to severe grain transportation problems, all at
an economic cost to farm families. These policy changes
dramatically changed the farming sector, contributing to
declining farm numbers, farm income volatility, and peri-
ods of acute crisis in rural communities (Wiebe 2012;
Qualman 2011).
Financialization is both a continuation of and a deep-
ening of the neoliberal restructuring of agriculture. Schol-
ars use the term ‘‘financialization of food’’ to refer to the
increasing interpenetration of the worlds of finance and the
agri-food sector (Burch and Lawrence 2009; Clapp 2012).
1 cialization of farmland is not confined to the global South,
The Crow’s Nest Pass Agreement and its attendant freight rate
(most commonly referred to as the Crow Rate) was a historical
agreement between the federal government of Canada and the
Canadian Pacific Railway (CPR). It provided the railway company
with concessions and benefits while also requiring it to reduce
transportation costs for farmers shipping grain from the prairies
provinces to other domestic and export markets.
2
For a detailed analysis of structural adjustment of the Canadian
agricultural sector see Qualman and Wiebe (2002).
151
This is a complex process, unfolding unevenly in different
social and geographic contexts, but characterized by the
growing influence of financial logics and actors over the
production and distribution of food and other agricultural
products. Agri-food financialization is driven in part by the
broader transformation of the global economy under
neoliberalism, but also by changes specific to the agri-food
sector. As the global food system has become more inte-
grated and commercialized, and as demand for food, fibre,
and fuels increases with rising incomes and world popu-
lation, agriculture has become an increasingly attractive
target of financial investment (Cotula 2012; Burch and
Lawrence 2009). Some of the most well-known examples
of agri-food financialization are the huge increase in
speculative trading in food and other agricultural com-
modities (Clapp 2012), private equity takeovers of major
supermarket chains (Burch and Lawrence 2013), the pri-
vatization and commodification of agricultural risk man-
agement (Isakson 2015), and the growing interest of
investors in farmland as an ‘alternative asset class’ (Fair-
bairn 2014b).
For the purposes of this article, we are primarily inter-
ested in the financialization of farmland, a process that has
been accelerating since the global food crisis of
2007–2008. There has been an upsurge in farmland
acquisition in the global South, often taking the form of
speculative ventures to transform ‘unoccupied’ or ‘under-
utilized’ lands into export-oriented platforms for food or
biofuel production (GRAIN 2010; Journal of Peasant
Studies 2011, 2012; Globalizations 2013; Third World
Quarterly 2013; Development and Change 2013). McMi-
chael (2012) interprets this trend as a consequence of and a
response to the crisis of the contemporary ‘‘food regime’’.
After decades of neoliberal deregulation, the corporate
food regime has created social, economic and ecological
contradictions, including food price volatility, hunger, and
rural poverty. Fuelled by financial investment and specu-
lation, large scale land acquisitions are portrayed as a
‘spatial fix’ to bring ‘new land’ and labour into production
for the global agri-food system thus directly affecting those
producing for subsistence and/or local and national mar-
kets. Though the media often focus on the role of states
such as China, Saudia Arabia, and South Korea in ‘land
grabbing’, many large-scale deals are in fact initiated by
private investors (Cotula 2012; Daniel 2012). The finan-
but also involves investors pouring large sums of money
into acquiring farmland in emerging economies such as
Argentina (Murmis and Murmis 2012), Russia and Eastern
Europe (Visser and Spoor 2010) as well as industrialized
countries like the US, Canada, and Australia (Fairbairn
2014b; Mittal and Moore 2014; Sommerville and Magnan
2015).
123
152
Scholars have documented different models under
which investors gain access to farmland.3 Fairbairn (2014a)
argues that the financialization of farmland combines
‘speculative’ and ‘productive’ logics, as investors seek
exposure to the upside of both farmland ownership and
agricultural production. There is a basic distinction to be
made between ‘own operate’ models, where the investor
both owns the farmland and directly oversees agricultural
production, versus the ‘own lease-out’ model, a more
passive approach where the investors rent the land to
independent farm operators (Fairbairn 2014a). Other
models include ‘lease operate’, where large corporate
farming ventures rent huge tracts of land for agricultural
production (Murmis and Murmis 2012; Sommerville and
Magnan 2015), and ‘joint venture models’, where investors
and farmers develop more complex arrangements for dis-
tributing risks and rewards (Magnan 2015). Whatever the
model, these schemes are often managed by specialized
farmland investment companies, who offer a variety of
services to investor clients, including building a portfolio
of farm properties, managing leases with farming tenants,
directly managing agricultural production, or some com-
bination of the above (Sommerville and Magnan 2015;
Fairbairn 2014a). One of the new frontiers for farmland
investment is ‘securitization’, a process whereby compa-
nies are creating new financial instruments to turn farmland
into a more ‘liquid’ investment. These instruments include
farmland exchange traded funds (Fairbairn 2014a) and real
estate investment trusts (Gunnoe 2014).
The financialization of farmland may have profound
implications for the organization of agriculture and for rural
communities. Gunnoe (2014) argues that the financialization
of farmland expands the power of financial actors at the
expense of rural communities and farmers, part of a larger
transition to a neorentier society. One concern is that
investor enthusiasm could lead to a speculative bubble in
farmland prices, or could otherwise distort land markets to
the detriment of owner-operators. Sommerville and Magnan
(2015) have argued that the ‘own lease-out’ model can have
a rationalizing and disciplining effect on farmer-tenants,
whose farming practices are closely monitored by their
corporate landlords. In the Saskatchewan case, financial
investment in farmland may be facilitating and accelerating
the consolidation of land under fewer, larger farming oper-
ations (Desmarais et al. 2015b). The financialization of
3 or the spatial distribution of investment, province-wide, as
While our discussion integrates the recent literature, it is important
to highlight here the earlier work of some key authors that we have
not yet mentioned. Especially noteworthy is the political economy
analysis of large-scale land deals in the double special issue of the
Journal of Peasant Studies introduced by White et al. (2012).
Safransky and Wolford (2011), meanwhile, shed light on the main
mechanisms of accumulation that facilitate a creeping expansion of
land investment in many parts of the world.
123
A. A. Desmarais et al.
farmland also raises important questions about how corpo-
rate landlords affect community dynamics, including local
trust and the circulation of economic benefits in local com-
munities (Sommerville and Magnan 2015; Sippel 2015). van
der Ploeg et al. (2015) suggest that corporate and financial
investment in European farmland is leading both to effective
loss of control over land (‘land grabbing’) as well as on-
going ownership concentration.
In light of land grabbing, financialization, and the new
enclosures they represent, recent scholarly work has tried to
articulate a progressive land politics that can inform the
struggles of communities and social movements against
these trends. Borras and Franco (2012) suggest that an
appropriate framework for this purpose is ‘land sover-
eignty’: ‘‘the right of working peoples to have effective
access to, use of, and control over land and the benefits of its
use and occupation, where land is understood as resource,
territory, and landscape’’ (p. 6). The notion of land sover-
eignty is deeply connected to food sovereignty, the broader
struggle for democratic control over food and agriculture
systems. Importantly, ‘land sovereignty’ challenges the
dominant (neoliberal) conceptualization of land as nothing
more than an economic resource by recognizing the multiple
values and uses of land, including its profound connection to
identity, nature, and livelihoods. Although land sovereignty
is conceptualized as a political project led by social move-
ments and communities, as Borras et al. (2015) insist, the
role of the state must not be ignored. The state can play a role
in advancing land sovereignty to the extent that it can
mobilize and redistribute resources, regulate and restrict the
actions of powerful actors, and establish legal frameworks.
Furthermore, McMichael (2015) argues that addressing the
land question requires a food sovereignty politics whereby
sovereignty means gaining ‘‘epistemic autonomy’’ to
replace an emphasis on a financial calculus with an eco-
logical calculus (p. 444). In the process, ‘‘states are pressured
to protect the rights to, and values of, small-scale producer
practices’’ and production models that are based on ‘‘social
co-operation, multifunctionality and ecologically restorative
principles’’ (p. 434).
We aim to contribute to the literature on agri-food
restructuring and land politics in two ways. First, our
research method allows us to paint a very detailed picture
of the actual patterns of farmland ownership. No study to
date has attempted to quantify the amount of land currently
owned by investors, the rate of change of investor holdings,
we do here. Typically, ‘land grabbing’ studies rely on news
reports, company websites, and other easily accessible
information to determine the land holdings of financial
investors (Edelman 2013; Oya 2013). While these sources
of information can be useful, they potentially ignore the
importance of private investors, wealthy individuals, or
Investor ownership or social investment? Changing farmland ownership in Saskatchewan, Canada
other financial actors with little media or public profile.
Our more fine-grained analysis provides some insights into
the identity and nature of farmland investors that could not
have been obtained using other methods. We believe this
approach helps address some criticisms of the ‘land grab-
bing’ literature, including the reliance on secondary sour-
ces for data on landholdings.4
Second, we provide an historical analysis that allows us to
consider how political, economic, and ideological factors
have shaped the legal and institutional context of farmland
ownership as well as ownership patterns. In doing so, we
respond to the call for more historically informed analyses of
contemporary land politics (Edelman et al. 2013). In par-
ticular, we stress the importance of government regulation of
farmland ownership, which in different historical moments
resolved the competing interests of farmers, rural commu-
nities, and investors in different ways. We argue that farm-
land ownership rules reflect different ways of valuing
farmland and the relationships of different actors (farmers
and investors) to the land. Here, we introduce the idea of
‘social investment’ in farmland, the investment of labour,
ingenuity, and social commitment made by those who work
the land for the purpose of realizing future security and social
wellbeing and political goals as well as economic develop-
ment. We contrast this to ‘financial investment’ in farmland,
which is motivated by the promise of economic gains
through rents (interest), production profits, and appreciation
of the underlying asset. Historically, Saskatchewan farmland
ownership restrictions privileged the social investment of
farm families into the land over the role of farmland as a
financial investment. We analyze the shifting regulatory
regime for farmland in these terms, and relate this to the
prospects for land sovereignty in Saskatchewan.
Historical context: changes in farmland ownership
legislation
The current debate about farmland ownership in Sas-
katchewan is occurring within a long history of indigenous
peoples’ presence and interaction with this land (Desmarais
et al. 2015b). The Dominion Lands Act and Homestead Act
of 1872 represented the first wave of enclosures in the
province as land was demarcated and subsequently made
available as privatized and thus commodified homesteads
of 160 acres to European male settlers who agreed to clear
and break the land for agriculture. The Dominion Lands
Act was promulgated in the context of the dispossession of
aboriginal peoples, including their eventual surrender of
4
See the Journal of Peasant Studies (2013) special issue on land
grabbing methodology for discussions of a number of methodological
issues that need to be addressed.
153
land through treaties signed with the federal government—
processes that were followed by violence (Savage 2012;
Daschuk 2013). For example, The Northwest Rebellion of
1885 erupted in part as a response to the federal govern-
ment’s non-recognition of alternative rights to land for the
Métis, a distinct aboriginal people descended from
indigenous and European ancestors.
For nearly seven decades following the establishment of
the province in 1905 there were no restrictions on farmland
ownership in Saskatchewan. This changed in 1974 with
The Saskatchewan Farm Ownership Act that restricted
farmland ownership to Saskatchewan residents. In 2002 the
farmland ownership legislation changed again with
amendments to The Saskatchewan Farm Security Act that
effectively opened up the land market beyond Saskatch-
ewan residents to allow Canadian residents, citizens and
corporations to own agricultural land.5 Under the 2002
legislation, non-Canadians were still prohibited from
owning all but small parcels (10 acres) of Saskatchewan
farmland. This is in contrast to some other Canadian pro-
vinces (British Columbia, Ontario, Nova Scotia and New-
foundland and Labrador), that allow foreign farmland
ownership.
The 1974 and 2002 legislation reflect two significantly
different periods in prairie rural history, each characterized
by different sets of values. In 1974, the farm community
was more unified, better mobilized, and economically
empowered through cooperative grain handling and col-
lective marketing structures. Saskatchewan farmers were
bolstered by the Land Bank, a program introduced by the
province’s social democratic government in 1972. The
Land Bank enabled the Government of Saskatchewan to
purchase farmland at market prices and lease it back to
farmers at a reasonable cost thus facilitating the inter-
generational transfer of land by effectively relieving
farmers of the debts incurred by the constant re-capital-
ization of the land. As one government elected official
explained at the time, the objective of the land bank ‘‘is to
keep the number of viable family farms operating … to
protect the small land owner, and provide assistance for the
small farm unit to increase its holdings and to give
incentives to young farmers wanting to start farming. The
object also … is to stop the trend to large corporate farms,
many of them controlled from outside our country’’
(Kowalchuk 1971). The initial idea behind the Land Bank
was to make a significant portion of farmland a publicly
owned resource in efforts to strengthen the family farm and
5
The Saskatchewan Farm Ownership Act of 1974 was amended
several times and replaced by the Saskatchewan Farm Security Act in
1988. Subsequently, the latter was amended by The Saskatchewan
Farm Security Amendment Act that was passed in July 2002 and took
effect in January 2003. It is, however, generally called The
Saskatchewan Farm Security Act.
123
154
build viable rural communities (Gidluck 1995). While the
Land Bank faced criticism from both the right and left,
those who participated in it did gain access to farmland
otherwise not available to them. Before the program was
dismantled in 1982 by the Progressive Conservative gov-
ernment, the Land Bank was responsible for 1.3 million
acres representing 2 % of the agricultural land base
(Beingessner 2013, p. 35).6
The 1974 farmland ownership legislation was intro-
duced following a series of public hearings organized by
the government-formed Special Committee on the Own-
ership of Agricultural Lands. The Committee’s mandate—
‘‘to investigate the purchase and ownership of agricultural
lands by non-resident, foreign and corporate persons’’—
reflected growing concerns about corporate ownership,
foreign investment and who should own Saskatchewan
farmland (Kowalchuk 1973, p. 3083). The Committee
ultimately presented twelve recommendations to the Sas-
katchewan legislature—all intended to help ensure the
livelihoods and stability of family farms in the context of
the cost-price squeeze, bolster the farm economy,
strengthen local control of the land, and address intergen-
erational transfer of farmland (Kowalchuk 1973,
pp. 3086–3087). The Chair of the Committee, in presenting
the recommendations to the legislature, put it like this:
[A]ll members of the committee had in mind the
welfare of the Saskatchewan farmer and the welfare
of the Saskatchewan people and the community and
were searching for answers to the many different and
difficult problems the farming community was being
continuously faced with, regardless of what other
differences of opinion they may have had personally.
They all recognized that farm lands are a resource far
different than the other resources of the province; that
it was a commodity that we have only so much of;
that agriculture being the basic industry of Sas-
katchewan, the land base was a very crucial resource
in the overall economy of our province and its people
and, therefore, there was an overall agreement that if
we were to be masters of our economic destiny, we
the people of the land would have to be in control of
our land. (Kowalchuk 1973, pp. 3083–3084)
Thus, while the farm economy was highly unstable and
land concentration was on the rise, social investment in the
farming community was seen as key to the future of agri-
culture in the province. The Committee’s recommendations
included, among other things, strengthening cooperatives,
recognizing only corporations formed by farm families or
6
The Saskatchewan Land Bank Commission was disbanded in 1982
by The Land Bank Repeal and Temporary Provisions Act that took
effect in 1983.
123
A. A. Desmarais et al.
community agriculture co-operatives as having the right to
own land, and restricting farmland ownership to residents
of Saskatchewan.
By the early 2000s, the politics of farmland ownership,
and indeed the ideological outlook of the province’s social
democratic party had changed considerably. Neoliberalism
had gained significant ground in Saskatchewan and the
restructuring of agriculture was well underway (Qualman
and Wiebe 2002; Qualman 2011). New policies focused on
increasing production for export, attracting foreign
investment, cutting agricultural budgets, and deregulating
the agricultural industry, thus effectively turning much of
what had been previously under government jurisdiction
and oversight over to ‘‘the market’’ (Qualman and Wiebe
2002, p. 9). This shift reflected an increasing preoccupation
with the economic, rather than social value of land, as
many policy makers and elected officials proclaimed the
benefits of ‘investment’ and ‘competition’ that would be
achieved by opening up the farmland ownership restric-
tions. The government amended The Saskatchewan Farm
Security Act in 2002 to extend farmland ownership to all
Canadian individuals and corporations.7 In announcing the
new legislation, the government explained that it was
harmonizing its laws to be competitive with other pro-
vinces and that it was sending ‘‘a signal to other provinces
that Saskatchewan is open to outside investment’’
(Government of Saskatchewan 2002, quoted in Beingess-
ner 2013, p. 36). In short, the government justified the new
rules in neoliberal terms.8
There was some resistance to the loosening up of
farmland ownership restrictions. Government consultations
prior to the introduction of the new act in 2002 reveal
diverging positions among various stakeholders. On the
7
Others have different explanations of this policy shift. For example,
Ferguson et al. (2006) use an economic argument claiming that poor
economic returns from agriculture in the early 2000s led to a situation
in which there were more farmland sellers than buyers. According to
this argument, farmers generally supported lifting the ownership
restrictions in 2002 in order to prop up the price of farmland
(Ferguson et al. 2006, p. 62). A similar argument, pointed out by one
of the reviewers of this article, is that retiring farmers may stand to
benefit from having more potential buyers for their land. While these
arguments are plausible, we contend that a more complete explana-
tion must acknowledge the broader restructuring of agriculture
occurring on the prairies at the time.
8
The public narrative used to help justify this shift in policy related
to an impending legal case brought by an individual against the
Government of Saskatchewan. A resident of British Columbia wanted
to purchase land in Saskatchewan and threatened to file a court case
against the Government of Saskatchewan for not allowing him to do
so (Pratt 2015). He argued that Saskatchewan law was violating the
Canadian Charter of Rights and Freedoms, namely his rights to
mobility (Briere 2002; Patterson 2014a). While it may be that the
Government of Saskatchewan feared losing a court battle, other
provinces had restrictions on purchases of farmland by non-residents
(i.e. Prince Edward Island and Québec).
Investor ownership or social investment? Changing farmland ownership in Saskatchewan, Canada
one hand, business organizations were in favour of opening
up farmland ownership as a way of attracting investment.
The Canadian Federation of Independent Business, for
example, argued that restrictions stifled economic devel-
opment while the Saskatchewan Real Estate Association
stressed the negative effects of declining land prices and
the need to correct Saskatchewan’s ‘‘comparative disad-
vantage’’. Agricultural commodity organizations—like the
Western Canadian Wheat Growers Association, the Sas-
katchewan Stock Growers Association and the Saskatch-
ewan Canola Growers Association—expressed agreement
with the change to ‘‘modernize’’ and/or attract investment.
On the other hand, farmers’ organizations like the National
Farmers Union and the Agricultural Producers Association
of Saskatchewan opposed the change arguing that it posed
threats to family farms because it encouraged absentee
landlords and speculation. This resistance reflected
awareness of the social and economic power tied to
farmland ownership and differences in the value placed on
farmland and rural communities.
The remainder of this article discusses the changes in
land ownership that have occurred since The Saskatchewan
Farm Security Act was amended in 2002. Although these
changes are occurring within a specific economic, histori-
cal, cultural and legislative context, they serve as the basis
for a more general discourse on the values and priorities
that land ownership policies reflect. We return to these
issues in the discussion.
Methods9
Our research for this article set out to determine how much
Saskatchewan farmland is owned by investors, investment
companies, pension funds, and farmer/investor hybrids
(hereafter collectively referred to as ‘‘investors’’). Farmer/
investor hybrids include large and rapidly growing
agribusiness entities, many of which have made their land
purchases only recently. Because of their large size, rapid
growth, and more recent entry into the Saskatchewan land
market, farmer/investor hybrids differ from long-estab-
lished, usually smaller and slower expanding family farms.
Unlike investment companies, however, the corporations
and individuals that own or control these farmer/investor
hybrid entities appear to take a role in managing the
farming operations on their lands. This category makes up
only a small portion of the landowners we highlight, with
9
This article builds on the methods we used to document farmland
ownership and land concentration using land titles data and GIS
mapping techniques (Desmarais et al. 2015a). Please see the method-
ology section of this earlier article for additional details
and background.
155
traditional investors and investment companies making up
the large majority.
We began by obtaining a dataset of all land parcels in
the agricultural region of Saskatchewan from the pro-
vince’s Information Services Corporation (ISC). That
dataset included information on the location, area, and
owner(s) of each parcel as of June 5, 2014. Analysis of that
data, and similar data available free to the public on the
ISC website (www.isc.ca/LandTitles), allowed us to begin
to assemble a list of investors who owned farmland in the
province in mid-2014. Because the number of entities
(individuals, corporations, governments, utilities, etc.)
owning land in the agricultural area of Saskatchewan
exceeds 140,000, we confined our analysis to entities with
holdings exceeding 3000 acres in order to make our work
feasible. The ISC dataset lists approximately 1300 entities
that hold title to more than 3000 acres in the agricultural
region of Saskatchewan.
In examining the entities with holdings larger than 3000
acres, we employed several methods to distinguish between
those who are probably investors and those who are not.
We looked at the geographical distribution of their land
holdings, assuming that owners with very broad distribu-
tions—those entities holding farmland in many rural
municipalities widely scattered across the province—were
probably not farming the land themselves and were more
likely to hold the land for investment reasons. No one
factor, however, was used in isolation and multiple lines of
inquiry were applied to each entity. Many of the entities
that hold large amounts of farmland are corporations. Thus,
as a second method of identifying investors, we searched
the ISC’s corporate registry (www.isc.ca/CorporateR
egistry) and similar registries in other provinces. In several
cases we found that owners were investment vehicles, often
located in other provinces. We took that as evidence that
the entity owned the land for investment, and not farming,
purposes. Some investors were identified through media
reports and other academic articles that have reported on
large-scale land purchases in the province. And finally, we
consulted the websites of the companies in question, where
available, to understand the nature of their businesses.
Using the preceding methods, and building on a list that we
developed in our previous study (Desmarais et al. 2015a),
we compiled a list of entities we believe to be investors or
investment companies and not farming operations. In cases
where uncertainty remained, we contacted 29 entities by
mail, and, where necessary, followed up with a second
round of letters, phone calls, and emails. Using this multi-
pronged approach, we believe we have compiled an
accurate list of the principal investment entities that owned
farmland in the province of Saskatchewan in mid-2014.
In order to show changes over time, we compared the
situation in 2014 to that in 2002. We chose 2002 as our
123
156
Fig. 1 Locations of parcels owned by investors, 2002. Investors’
parcels are in blue. Credits: Map prepared by Sarina Gersher using
ArcGIS and source map data from Information Services Corporation
(Including Sask Grid, Rural Municipalities Boundary Overlay, Sask
comparator because it is the year before the implementation
of changes to the Saskatchewan Farm Security Act. We
obtained a second dataset, from ISC, listing the owners of
farmland in 2002 and applied the procedure listed above to
determine which of the entities in 2002 were likely investors
or investment companies. Using the list of investors com-
piled from the 2014 data, we determined how much land each
of these entities (and their affiliates and precursor entities)
owned in 2002. Having established our lists of investors for
2002 and 2014 and having determined the extent and loca-
tions of their holdings in each of the 2 years, we employed
GIS mapping software to create maps of investors’ land-
holdings in 2002 and 2014 (Figs. 1, 2). Using the same
software, we also mapped the amount of land investors
owned in each of Saskatchewan’s approximately 300 Rural
Municipalities (RM) in 2014 (Fig. 3). This map allows us to
see whether investor ownership is dispersed across the pro-
vince or clustered in certain regions.
123
A. A. Desmarais et al.
Surface Cadastral, and Ownership Datasets). Source map data utilized
and reproduced with the permission of Information Services Corpo-
ration. Additional GIS data from Natural Resources Canada and
GeoBase. (Color figure online)
To give an indication of changes in the concentration of
farmland ownership, we also calculated a measure we call
the CLO4: the Concentration of Land Ownership by the 4
largest owners (Desmarais et al. 2015a). Our CLO4 is
based on the widely used industrial organization metric,
CR4: the Concentration Ratio of the largest 4 firms [see
Constance et al. (2014) for a review of the use of the CR4
in agri-food studies]. In calculating the CLO4, we summed
the area of land holdings of the four largest private
landowning entities, excluding lands owned by the federal
and provincial governments, First Nations and Treaty Land
Entitlement entities,10 railways, resource companies and
10
The Treaty Land Entitlement process is intended to settle land
debts owed to Canadian First Nations who did not receive all the land
they were entitled to under treaties signed by the Crown. Treaty Land
Entitlement agreements are negotiated among First Nations, Canada’s
federal government, and provincial and territorial governments.
Crown land is transferred and/or money is provided so that a First
Investor ownership or social investment? Changing farmland ownership in Saskatchewan, Canada
Fig. 2 Locations of parcels owned by investors, 2014. Investors’
parcels are in blue. Credits: Map prepared by Sarina Gersher using
ArcGIS and source map data from Information Services Corporation
(Including Sask Grid, Rural Municipalities Boundary Overlay, Sask
utilities, wildlife preservation agencies, the Saskatchewan
Land Bank Commission, banks and credit unions, and
community pastures; but including private individuals and
corporations, farm families, and Hutterian Brethren
churches/colonies.11 In doing this, we intended to capture
private owners of farmland used primarily for agricultural
production. CLO4 measures are most informative when
compared across time, as we do in this article.
Our research utilized two datasets, each with more than
a million land title entries and more than 140,000 owners.
Footnote 10 continued
Nation can purchase federal, provincial or territorial, or private land
to settle the land debt.
11
The Hutterian Brethren, or Hutterites, belong to an Anabaptist sect
and operate large communal, collectively owned farms.
157
Surface Cadastral, and Ownership Datasets). Source map data utilized
and reproduced with the permission of Information Services Corpo-
ration. Additional GIS data from Natural Resources Canada and
GeoBase. (Color figure online)
In such datasets, it is not possible to locate every investor,
nor is it possible to find all interconnections between
entities. However, the vast majority (80–90 %) of farmland
owned by investors appears to be owned by the small
number of very large entities: those with holdings above
10,000 acres. We have investigated those entities thor-
oughly. Thus, we believe that our results accurately reflect
the situation with regard to investor ownership of farmland
in Saskatchewan.
Findings
Our analysis of the province of Saskatchewan reveals that
between 2002 and 2014, the amount of farmland owned by
investors increased 16-fold (Table 1). As of mid-2014,
three large entities owned more than 100,000 acres each
123
158 A. A. Desmarais et al.

Fig. 3 Percentage of land owned by investors in each Saskatchewan
Rural Municipality (RM), 2014. Credits: Map prepared by Sarina
Gersher using ArcGIS and source map data from Information
Services Corporation (Including Sask Grid, Rural Municipalities
Boundary Overlay, Sask Surface Cadastral, and Ownership Datasets).
Additional data provided from the Saskatchewan Assessment Man-
agement Agency (SAMA), by contract. Source map data utilized and
reproduced with the permission of Information Services Corporation.
Additional GIS data from Natural Resources Canada and GeoBase

Table 1 Saskatchewan farmland owned by investors, 2002 and 2014. Corporation. Additional data from Saskatchewan Assessment Man-
Sources: Adapted from Information Services Corporation Ownership agement Agency (SAMA), by request
Dataset, reproduced with the permission of Information Services
2002 2014

Farmland area owned by investors, investment companies, pension plans, and farmer/investor hybrids (acres) 51,957 837,019
Portion of total farmland area owned by investors, investment companies, pension plans, and farmer/investor hybrids (%) 0.09 1.44

(Table 2). Our mapping shows that investor holdings are Our research also shows that the concentration of farmland
clustered in certain regions and not spread evenly across ownership is increasing, with the share of farmland owned
the province (Fig. 3), raising the possibility that effects of by the largest four private owners increasing sixfold
such purchases may differ significantly from place to place. between 2002 and 2014 (Table 3).

123
Investor ownership or social investment? Changing farmland ownership in Saskatchewan, Canada
Amount of land owned by investors
Our research found that in mid-2014, investors owned
837,019 acres of farmland in Saskatchewan. This represents
1.44 % of the total area of Saskatchewan’s farmland owned
by private entities (i.e. excluding Crown land, First Nations
Land, or community pastures).12 For comparison, in 2002,
investors owned 51,957 acres, or 0.09 % of privately owned
farmland (Table 1). Between 2002 and 2014, the amount of
farmland owned by investors increased 16-fold.
Although investors own only a small share of Sas-
katchewan’s total farmland, this does not mean their
activities are unimportant to farmland markets. Each year,
only a small portion of farmland is transferred—bought and
sold on the open market (arm’s-length transactions) or
transferred privately, within a family, often from parents to
children (‘‘non-arm’s-length’’ transactions). In order to
assess the significance of investor purchases in relation to
the amount of land actually put onto the market, we
obtained a data set compiled by the Farm Land Security
Board, listing all farmland transactions in Saskatchewan
from 2003 to 2014. The amount of land bought and sold in
arm’s-length transactions in Saskatchewan between 2003
and 2014, inclusive, was 20.9 million acres13 (Farm Land
Security Board, by request). Over twelve years, investor
purchases represented about 3.8 % of the farmland that was
bought and sold at arm’s length in the province as a whole.
But because investor ownership is clustered in certain
regions (see Fig. 3, below), investor purchases in many
regions could be a multiple of the 3.8 % level. In addition, it
could be that investor activity was substantially higher in
certain years in the period under question. Media reports
suggest that most investment activity occurred between
2007 and 2014.
12
Estimates of total area of privately owwned farmland in the
province range from 57.95 million acres, according to data provided
by request from the Saskatchewan Assessment Management Agency
(SAMA) and their database which lists taxable agricultural land, to
61.63 million acres from Statistics Canada and their Census of
Agriculture (Statistics Canada CANSIM Table 004-0204). The two
values differ by 6.3 percent. This article uses the lower number, from
SAMA, because the authors believe that it is more likely to reflect the
actual acreage of privately owned farmland in the province.
13
In order to determine the reliability of the coding used by the
Farmland Security Board to distinguish between ‘‘arms length’’ and
‘‘family transactions’’, we conducted a statistical analysis. Based on a
random sample of all the ‘‘arms length’’ records, we found that 5.6 %
of the records did not represent market transactions between distinct
entities (0.9 % were improperly coded, 3.6 % were asset transfers
between related entities, and 1.1 % were annexations by a govern-
ment agency). We can say with 99 % confidence that 94.4 ± 0.27 %
of the transactions coded as ‘‘arms length’’ were in fact market
transactions between distinct entities. We calculated the acreage of
arms length transactions as follows: Sum of all transactions coded as
‘‘arms length’’ (22,135,780 acres) 9 0.944 = 20,896,108 acres.
159
Spatial distribution of investor-owned land
Figures 1 and 2 map the locations of the land parcels owned
by investors, investment companies, pension plans, and
farmer/investor hybrids in 2002 and 2014, respectively.
In both Figs. 1 and 2, the blue squares indicate parcels
owned by investors, investment companies, and farmer/in-
vestor hybrids. The grey lines represent boundaries of the
numbered rural municipalities. The smaller grey squares and
grey-outlined areas represent land excluded from RM juris-
diction, including First Nations reservations, cities, incorpo-
rated towns and villages, and provincial and other parks.
Comparing Figs. 1 and 2, the 16-fold increase in the
amount of land owned by investors is plainly visible.
Figure 2 also shows the clustering of farmland parcels and
the greater intensity of investor ownership in some RMs,
such as those south of Regina, for example. Figure 3 pro-
vides a different way of capturing the geographic distri-
bution of investor purchases, shading each RM based on
the percentage of land owned by investors.
Figure 3 shows several clusters of investor activity:
south of Regina, southwest of Saskatoon, and several
around Yorkton. No systematic explanation of this clus-
tering is apparent but possible explanations for these
patterns of investment certainly deserve further explo-
ration. Leaving causes aside, we can see from the map
that in several RMs, investors own significant amounts of
land. In 53 RMs (of the 295 in total), investors own more
than 3 % of farmland (the range is 3–9.3 %). In 16 RMs,
investors own more than 5 % of farmland (the range is
5–9.3 %). Again, only a small portion of land is bought
and sold at arm’s length each year. Thus, for investors to
acquire 5 or 8 % of the farmland in a given RM over a
12-year period, they may have had to purchase perhaps
14–22 % of the farmland offered for sale in arm’s-length
transactions.14 In many individual RMs and regions,
investor purchases have likely had a significant effect on
the local land market.
Principle farmland investors
Our research identified 37 investors, investment companies,
pension plans, and farmer/investor hybrids with holdings
over 3000 acres. Table 3 lists a subset of those entities—
those with holdings above 10,000 acres. For various
14
Investors own 1.44 % of Saskatchewan farmland, representing
3.8 % of the farmland sold in arms-length transactions over the last
12 years. Thus, for every percentage point in the rate of investor
ownership, investors purchased 2.77 % of the land sold in arms-
length transactions (3.8/1.44 = 2.64). A 5 % rate of investor own-
ership would thus translate into 13 % of the land sold in arms-length
transactions, and an 8 % rate of ownership into 21 % of the land sold
in arms length transactions.
123
160 A. A. Desmarais et al.

Table 2 Principle farmland investors in Saskatchewan, 2002 and 2014

Investor type Entity 2002 2014 Description
holdings holdings
(acres) (acres)

Pension plans 101138678 Saskatchewan Ltd. (Canada
Pension Plan Investment Board)
Private investors, and Robert Andjelic; and Andjelic Land Inc.
investment funds,
companies, and HCI Ventures Ltd.; incl. HCI Farms Indian
partnerships Head Ltd.
TopSoil Farm Land Management (II) Inc.;
Blueberry & Papaya Farms Ltd.; Kiwi &
Mango Farms Ltd.; and associated
companies
Agcapita GP II Ltd.; Agcapita GP III Ltd.;
and Agcapita GP IV Ltd.
West Star Agricultural Ltd.; and Alykhan
Karim Bhanji
AGMW Regina Farms Ltd.
Chinook Bison Ranch Ltd.
Prairie Merchant Corporation
101168777 Saskatchewan Ltd. (a general
partner of Agco Ag Ventures LP)
Weyburn Security Company Limited 15,075
Netherlands Investment Company of Canada 11,581
Limited
Bonnefield Farmland Saskatchewan Inc.; and
Bonnefield GP II Inc.
Hardin Investments Ltd.
Laborde Enterprises Ltd.
Yang’s Crop Inc.
Farmer/investor Cor Van Raay; and Van Raay Land Inc.
hybrids
Nil-Ray Farms Ltd.
3L Cattle Company Ltd.
Other An aggregation of 18 other investors and 10,158
investment companies with holdings of
3000–10,000 acres each
Totals (acres) 51,957
113,867 The CPPIB, which manages more than $CA 260
billion on behalf of the Canada Pension Plan,
acquired its entire portfolio from a farmland
investment partnership, Assiniboia Farmland
LP, in 2013
160,858 Individual investor living in Alberta, with
landholdings in 78 RMs
8010 113,723 Family-controlled investment company, based in
Alberta
3317 84,516 A group of affiliated companies, including
TopSoil Farmland Management Fund, a
private equity fund. Some of these entities are
investment companies while others may be
farmer/investor hybrids
29,228 Farmland investment company catering to
individual and institutional investors.
22,534 Individual investor from Saskatchewan, with
landholdings in 37 RMs
21,205 Private investment company, with shareholders
including the Aquilini family (owners of the
Vancouver Canucks), Chip Wilson (founder of
Lulu Lemon), and other wealthy individuals
18,740 Private company affiliated with the U.S. Ricketts
family, billionaire owners of the Chicago Cubs
17,671 Private investment company owned by high-
profile Canadian investor, Brett Wilson.
15,453 Agco Ag Ventures is a limited partnership
investment company, partly owned by
SaskWorks, a Saskatchewan-based mutual
fund
14,879 An insurance, financial planning, and investment
company based in Saskatchewan
12,446 Manitoba-registered subsidiary of a Dutch
company
11,163 Toronto-based farmland investment company
catering to individual and institutional
investors
10,930 Private investment company, based in Alberta.
10,416 Private investment company, based in Alberta
10,032 Private investment company, based in British
Columbia
33,730 Former owner of one of Alberta’s largest
feedlots who has expanded into Saskatchewan
since the mid-2000s
14,803 Owned by the Nilsson brothers, former owners
of one of Canada’s two largest beef packing
plants
3815 14,097 Owned by founder of a British Columbia-based
logging company
106,728
837,019

123
Investor ownership or social investment? Changing farmland ownership in Saskatchewan, Canada
reasons, including privacy considerations for smaller
investors and some degree of uncertainty regarding the
status of a small number of entities (questions as to whether
they are investors or farmers) we have not listed individuals
and companies holding less than 10,000 acres each.
Table 2 shows the large size of many of the investors,
the growing number of active investment entities, and the
rapid growth in the holdings of most of the investors. Most
entities held little or no land in 2002, and many of those
that had land in 2002 have multiplied their holdings. The
entities listed in Table 2 represent a number of different
ownership structures and models. Among the most
prominent investors is the Canada Pension Plan Investment
Board, which garnered a lot of media attention and public
commentary when it purchased a very large portfolio of
land from Assiniboia Farmland LP/Assiniboia Capital
Corp., in 2013. Some of the investors with the largest
landholdings are less well known. The single biggest pri-
vate owner of farmland is a wealthy individual. Based on
an estimate of land values of between $600 and $1200 per
acre, his holdings could be worth $CA 100 million to 200
million. Family-owned investment companies and other
wealthy individuals represent a number of the largest
investors. Others, including AgCapita, Bonnefield, Top-
Soil, and Agco Ag Ventures are farmland investment
companies and funds that provide exposure to farmland for
a range of shareholders and investors. Typically, these
investors lease their land to farm operators in what is
known as the ‘own lease-out’ model of farmland invest-
ment (Fairbairn 2014a).
In studying the land titles data we also found at least
three entities, Nil-Ray Farms Ltd., Cor Van Raay and Van
Raay Land Inc., and 3L Cattle Company Ltd., that appear
to be farmer/investor hybrids and which have, in the past
decade or so, bought up tens-of-thousands of acres of land.
Table 3 Concentration of Land Ownership by the 4 largest owners
(CLO4), 2002 and 2014. Sources: Adapted from Information Services
Corporation Ownership Dataset, reproduced with the permission of
2002
Area owned by four largest entities 74,549
(acres)
Total privately held farmland in 57,950,000
Saskatchewan (acres)
CLO4 (%) 0.13
Four largest private owners Hutterian brethren church of
(acreage in parentheses) Hillcrest (24,296)
Hutterian brethren of Arm River
Colony Ltd. (19,401)
Hutterian brethren of Golden View
Inc. (15,780)
Weyburn Security Company
Limited (15,072 acres)
161
These are large, rapidly growing entities that have only
recently purchased most of their land, and, as such, they
differ from long-established, usually smaller and slower
expanding family farms. These entities also differ from
investment companies in that the former appear to be
taking a role in managing the farming operations on their
lands.
Concentration of land ownership
Table 3 lists CLO4 values, described in the methods sec-
tion above. In 2002, the four largest private land owners
owned 0.13 % of the province’s farmland. In 2014, the four
largest owned 0.82 %. Thus, the four largest owners have
increased their share of farmland ownership more than
sixfold in 12 years. We also note that the largest single
landowner in 2014 owned 160,858 acres—twice as much
as the four largest together owned in 2002. Table 3 pro-
vides the names of the four largest private owners in each
year. In 2002, three of the four largest private landowners
in the province were Hutterite brethren churches/co-
lonies—collectively-owned family farms that work the
land they own. The fourth largest entity in 2002 was an
investment company. In contrast, in 2014, all four of the
four largest entities were investors or investment
companies.
Discussion—land politics: priorities, prices
and power
Our findings show that investors of different stripes have
accumulated large landholdings in Saskatchewan since the
liberalization of farmland ownership rules in 2003. It must
be kept in mind that, traditionally, farmland ownership has
Information Services Corporation. Additional data from Saskatch-
ewan Assessment Management Agency (SAMA), by request
2014
472,964
57,950,000
0.82
Robert Andjelic and Andjelic Land Inc. (160,858)
101138678 Saskatchewan Ltd. (Canada Pension Plan Investment
Board) (113,867)
HCI Ventures Ltd. (113,723)
TopSoil Farm Land Management Inc.; Blueberry & Papaya Farms
Ltd.; and associated companies (84,516)
123
162
been dispersed among tens of thousands of separate own-
ers, each with an infinitesimally small share of the total
land base. While the total share of Saskatchewan farmland
owned by investors in 2014 was small, we contend that it is
the trend that is significant. If investors continue to accu-
mulate landholdings at the pace they did between 2003 and
2014, it could result in a dramatic shift in ownership pat-
terns over the course of the next decades. Even if investor
purchases level off, their activities are important at the
local level. We have shown that in certain RMs, investor
ownership is as high as 8–10 % of the land base.
The entry of non-farmer investors into the farmland
market has provoked an important debate about farmland
ownership rules in Saskatchewan. Public concern, aug-
mented by coffee shop anecdotes, rumours and partisan
political rhetoric, prompted the government-initiated
review of the Saskatchewan Farm Security Act mentioned
above. For the remainder of this discussion, we raise some
fundamental and recurring questions of values, perspec-
tives, power and ownership that emerge in the Saskatch-
ewan land ownership debate but have resonance for land
politics elsewhere as well.
The current land politics and policy discourse in Sas-
katchewan is taking place in the context of a long history of
indigenous peoples living on this land. The dispossession and
displacement of indigenous peoples by settlers constituted a
radical shift in the use and role of land, moving it from tradi-
tional territories occupied by peoples to newly deeded parcels
owned by individuals. This shift has been so overpowering that
the earlier indigenous perspectives on lands was not even
acknowledged, let alone presented as an alternative possibility,
in the Government of Saskatchewan (2015b) consultation
process on farmland ownership. The range of political and
cultural options under discussion precluded the possibility of
reverting to the historical communal or commons approaches
to land occupancy. The institutional framework of surveyed,
deeded and privately owned land was not in question,
demonstrating just how effective the institutional framework
installed with The Dominion Lands Act a century and a half
earlier has been. However, evolving global and local condi-
tions are further reshaping the land policy landscape.
Currently, the increasing dominance of neoliberalism
informs the discourse about land. The mobility of capital,
coupled with the volatility of financial markets, has made
the stability of investments in Saskatchewan land attrac-
tive. But these external factors are interpreted and acted on
from within the more local context. The neoliberal com-
modification and financialization of nature not only moves
farmland into the category of a marketable commodity but
also gives that view primacy. In this context, farmland is
seen primarily as an investment opportunity and larger
farms, with subsequently fewer farmers who have a direct,
123
A. A. Desmarais et al.
living/livelihoods relationship with land, mean that fewer
voices are engaged in land politics.
Land ownership continues to be an important determi-
nant of economic and political power, despite economic
diversification and urbanization. The legislation governing
land both reflects and shapes how land is viewed and used,
and also who gets to own and use it. As such, land legis-
lation facilitates different models of agriculture. One can
imagine, for instance, a model in which investor land
ownership facilitates ever greater consolidation of farm-
land under corporate control. Institutional owners may
prefer to lease their land to a single, corporate operator,
rather than to a large number of independent, local farmers,
undermining the traditional family-farming model in the
process (Patterson 2014b).
Our research points to the important role that the state and
legislation continue to have in shaping land politics as well as
determining ownership and use of land. As Borras et al.
(2013) point out in their analysis of the role of states in the
global land-grabbing phenomena, governments can, on the
one hand, ‘‘(a) regulate to facilitate land deals; (b) regulate to
mitigate negative impacts and maximize opportunities; and
(c) regulate to stop and rollback land grabbing’’ (p. 168). On
the other hand, neoliberal land policy designed to facilitate
large-scale land deals prioritizes financial investment (land-
grabbing), discounting social investment in agriculture, farm
families and rural communities.
By restricting farmland ownership to provincial resi-
dents, The Saskatchewan Farm Ownership Act of 1974
seemed to affirm the value of the relationship between land
ownership and security of tenure. As there were no
restrictions on farm size or how much land an individual or
corporate entity could own, however, the 1974 law did not
prevent the on-going process of farm concentration, as
farm size increased and farm numbers declined. Yet, by
restricting farmland ownership to residents of the province,
the legislation weighted social investment—living in, and
contributing to, Saskatchewan communities—over capital
investment. The 2002 policy change reflected a shift by
giving priority to capital investment in farmland and
broadening the residency/citizenship requirement for
ownership to all Canadians.
Arguably each of these land policy milestones were
implemented with the purpose of encouraging investments
in farm land. Although the term ‘‘investment’’ most often
suggests financial investments within the framework of
neoliberal or capitalist discourse, money is only one kind
of investment. The generic meaning of ‘‘investment’’ is to
deliberately put valuable resources into something with the
purpose of realizing an increased good or profit in the
future. For example, drawing settlers to the prairies with
The Dominion Lands Act, 1872 or trying to ensure that
Investor ownership or social investment? Changing farmland ownership in Saskatchewan, Canada
farming families owned the land with The Saskatchewan
Farm Ownership Act, 1974, were deliberate strategies to
encourage social investment in farmland and rural com-
munities. In contrast, the Saskatchewan Farm Security Act,
2002, focused primarily on attracting financial investment
based on the potential for monetary returns in the form of
rents (interest), production profits and, most importantly,
appreciation in the value of the purchased assets. This
neoliberal strategy thwarts progressive land politics,
interrupts social investment, and further undermines land
sovereignty by inviting market forces to dictate the real-
location and ownership of land.
Maximizing financial investment, i.e. regulating to
‘‘facilitate land deals’’ would be accomplished by remov-
ing all restrictions on foreign investors seeking to purchase
land in Saskatchewan. This would draw wealthy buyers
from around world. The resulting increase in land values
would mean a better retirement package for those leaving
farming, but potentially much higher barriers to entry into
the industry for young farmers. Indeed, the farmers we
interviewed highlighted the rising price of farmland as a
significant obstacle for younger farmers. The added capital
investment in land would also likely result in higher con-
centration of ownership. However, the current Saskatch-
ewan policy, while geared to attracting financial
investment, restricts ownership to Canadians. This facili-
tates the flow of out-of-province capital into farmland
while intervening in the land market by limiting the power
of ownership to those entities entirely governed by Cana-
dian law. The policy recognizes that political, as well as
economic, power is vested in land ownership.
Our research demonstrates that the strategy of seeking to
mitigate negative effects while maximizing investment
opportunities is resulting in a rapid concentration of land in
the hands of non-Saskatchewan investors. The increase in
land prices for entering farmers, the perception of unfair
competition, concern about changing communities along
with a range of public concerns placed enough pressure on
the current Government of Saskatchewan to re-examine the
Farm Land Security Act in 2015. In an attempt to ‘‘mitigate
negative impacts’’ and allay public concerns, the govern-
ment has moved to clarify the current restrictions on for-
eign investors and prohibit Canadian ‘‘institutional’’
investors such as Pension Funds from purchasing farmland
in Saskatchewan (Government of Saskatchewan 2015c). It
is not clear, however, what impact this ‘‘tightening’’ of
restrictions will have on farmland ownership patterns.15
Although the new rules restrict the activities of ‘‘institu-
tional’’ investors, they do not restrict Canadian private
investors from purchasing land in Saskatchewan, and our
15
Given that the new legislation has yet to be introduced, it is too
early to know precisely what form the restrictions will take.
163
research indicates the accumulation of farmland by private
investors is significant and increasing.
A land sovereignty approach goes beyond the economic
value of land to focus on the social and political. Priori-
tizing social investment in agriculture, farm families and
rural communities entails recognizing the social value of
land. As farm families have demonstrated for generations,
social investment in farms and communities (knowing and
caring for the land and communities) is neither calculated
nor paid in financial capital. The commitment to the farm
which farm families demonstrate by dedicating off-farm
income and long hours to it adds value, enhances social
stability and may improve prospects for entering farmers.
Arguably, external capital that transfers ownership from
farm operators to investors cannot compensate for this lost
‘‘social capital’’. While rental arrangements where former
owners continue to occupy the farmsteads, farm the land
and participate in their local communities may mask these
losses, long term control, decision-making and the care and
commitment that stems from intergenerational security of
tenure are altered by the change from owners to renters.
Land sovereignty, and therewith the prospect of greater
food sovereignty, is increasingly undermined.
A regulatory framework that prioritizes social invest-
ment and strengthens land sovereignty would need to do
more than merely narrow the list of outside investors
acquiring farmland. It would need to enhance, support and
strengthen the social economy. This could include making
room for social enterprises by instituting more robust forms
of public/collective/social ownership through new forms of
land banking, land trusts, cooperatives and other ownership
structures. Other policy options that would indirectly affect
land investment, favouring social investment over specu-
lative capital, are regulations restricting the use of farmland
to agricultural production only. Another would place a cap
on how much land one person/entity can own. Also, policy
interventions in the land rental market (rent controls) might
serve as a disincentive to outside investors while making
farming more affordable for family farmers. Land politics,
like the land itself, is the ground that holds and shapes the
social, economic, ecological and cultural life of a society.
Conclusion
Whereas it was once possible to assert that Saskatchewan
‘‘has never experienced the phenomena [sic] where large
tracts of farmland are owned by absentee landlords’’
(Ferguson et al. 2006, p. 60), this historical trend is
changing. In this article, we have provided an historical
context and documented the increasing significance of
non-farmer ownership of Saskatchewan farmland. As in
many other jurisdictions, investors of different kinds have
123
164
purchased large-tracts of Saskatchewan farmland over the
last 10 years. These developments, along with rapidly
rising farmland prices, have resurrected public debates
about how and to what extent farmland ownership should
be restricted.
Land policy is critically important in shaping who
farms, how farming is done and the fate of rural commu-
nities. Land ownership policy discourse raises some fun-
damental questions: What are the key values farmland
policies are meant to protect and enhance? And, what kinds
of investments are most needed to reflect those values? The
complex array of values, the diverse range of actors and
interests, and the sheer overall importance of land and food
require carefully articulated policies that take account of
the needs and benefits of both social and financial
investments.
Our research to date indicates that policies that focus
primarily on capital investment will only accelerate the
current situation whereby an increasing amount of farm-
land in Saskatchewan is owned by non-farmers, and con-
centration of land ownership continues to rise. We contend
that this undermines the prospect of establishing a flour-
ishing, ecologically sustainable, adequately capitalized,
socially just and vibrant rural and agriculture sector. It
thwarts the renewal of rural communities by making entry
into farming prohibitively expensive for beginning farmers.
And it further undermines initiatives for local food self-
sufficiency and food sovereignty. Hence, in this context,
we see much more potential for social and environmental
wellbeing by following a land sovereignty approach that
emphasizes a widespread and democratic land politics and
social investment.
Further research is needed to understand more deeply
the on-the-ground effects investor purchases and land-
holding have on local farmland markets and social rela-
tions. For instance, how does investor activity at the local
scale affect the affordability of farmland for owner-oper-
ators? How does investor ownership affect landlord-tenant
relations? How does investor ownership affect patterns of
land-use, environmental stewardship, and community
dynamics at the local level? While this article does not
answer these questions, the clusters of investment activity
we have identified are key sites for further research.
Acknowledgments This research was made possible with funding
from the Canada Research Chairs program, the Social Sciences and
Humanities Council of Canada, and the University of Manitoba. The
authors gratefully acknowledge the assistance provided by Sarina
Gersher who provided much needed GIS expertise and developed the
maps. We are especially grateful of the support provided by Dr. Geoff
Cunfer and his Historical GIS Lab at the University of Saskatchewan.
All maps were prepared using GIS data provided by Information
Services Corporation of Saskatchewan. We are grateful to the
University of Manitoba’s legal department for their work in drafting a
legal agreement with Information Services Corporation of
123
A. A. Desmarais et al.
Saskatchewan for use of their title-holder dataset. We also wish to
acknowledge the assistance of the National Farmers Union. Without
the cooperation of farm families and their democratic organizations,
research such as ours would be much more difficult. Finally, we
would like to thank four anonymous reviewers for their insightful
comments.
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A. A. Desmarais et al.
Annette Aurélie Desmarais is Canada Research Chair in Human
Rights, Social Justice and Food Sovereignty. She was a small-scale
farmer in Saskatchewan for over a decade. She is the author of La Vı́a
Campesina: Globalization and the Power of Peasants (2007) and co-
editor of Food Sovereignty: Reconnecting Food, Nature and Com-
munity (2010) and Food Sovereignty in Canada: Creating Just and
Sustainable Food Systems (2011).
Darrin Qualman was a farmer and for 15 years a senior staffperson
at Canada’s National Farmers Union, including several years as
Director of Research. He recently completed undergraduate degrees
in biology and history. He is in final revisions on a book on
civilizations and energy. He is also researching and writing on how to
achieve rapid greenhouse gas emission reductions in agriculture and
the larger food system.
André Magnan is an Associate Professor in the Department of
Sociology and Social Studies at the University of Regina, Canada. His
research interests are the history and politics of grain marketing and
the financialization of agriculture and food.
Nettie Wiebe Professor Emerita, St. Andrew’s College, University of
Saskatchewan is an active participant in public discourse and research
on sustainable agriculture and rural communities, economic and
environmental issues and food sovereignty. She is an organic farmer
and activist, having held leadership positions in the National Farmers
Union and the Vı́a Campesina.