Huge investors are driving small farmers off the land

Written By Peter Allan

While consolidation of farms is often touted as more efficient and beneficial for consumers, this rarely applies when it comes to food prices. Photo by Andretti Brown/Pexels

By Richard Scott Bloomfield

All eyes are on rising food prices and the Ontario government’s proposed Greenbelt development, and rightfully so. Food price increases and development of farmland are both very visible crises. However, the loss of farmers in Canada is an invisible crisis that will only exacerbate these problems.

Canada is headed toward a future with less than 100,000 farmers feeding a population of over 55 million people. This very well could happen before the turn of the century. The movement away from farming can be seen as economic progress and technological advancement and some may celebrate the so-called “entrepreneurial spirit” of investors gobbling up tens of thousands, sometimes hundreds of thousands, of acres. But it is worth considering why these trends aren’t helping us now and will only get worse in the future.

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Peter Allan
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