Corporate land grabs

Capitalist accumulation of farmland in eastern Ontario and the limits of the financialization hypothesis

Abstract

This paper argues that some recent examples of land grabbing in Canada are the result of capitalist accumulation by large-scale corporate farms. It details the findings and analysis of a farmland ownership survey of Eastern Ontario, between 2000 and 2017. The study hypothesized that farmland investment firms were driving farmland consolidation in the area, as seen in one comparable study (Desmarais et al. 2015). The land title survey, however, showed a relatively low amount of farmland consolidation by financial firms. It also identified that large-scale, family-owned corporate farms were responsible for the majority of farmland consolidation. The study also included interviews with farmers and farmland investors, which revealed that a handful of corporate farms succeeded in amassing large holdings of farmland through gradual capitalist accumulation of competing farms, assisted by differential access to market protection. The paper focusses on the inability of the farmland investment firms Walton International and Bonnefield Financial to accumulate any significant amount of farmland in the area. It identifies regulatory and market barriers to farmland financialization, including: land use zoning bylaws that protect prime agricultural areas and the contradictions between farmland values for farming and development. The study's findings show a different set of landed elites and political-economic processes involved in farmland consolidation than the financialization explanation documented in other similar studies. This suggests that the farmland grab phenomena in Canada is also based on land consolidation practices inherent to capitalist agriculture, rather than simply the specific political-economic imperatives of financial capital.