LONDON, Ont. – When “land grabs” hit the news, it is usually a story about China or oil-rich Middle Eastern countries buying foreign farmland to grow food destined for their country.
Stories of land grabs in developing countries are so widespread that the United Nation’s Food and Agriculture Organization is trying to draw up rules to govern the practice.
But panelists at the National Farmers Union annual conference Nov. 25 described Canadian style land grabs that have little to do with land-poor and money-rich foreign countries buying farmland.
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More often, it is corporations or municipalities gobbling up prime farmland for non-food projects by taking advantage of lax land protection rules.
“A nation that destroys its food system is a nation that destroys itself,” said Sue Machum, Canadian chair in social justice at St. Thomas University in Fredericton, N.B.
“Canada is one of those nations.”
She said it is an age-old problem of colonialism when the rich and powerful take land from the poor and less powerful.
“These days, our land for production continues to be threatened by investors, by cities that pave over our land,” she said.
On the same panel, two Ontario activists detailed their fights against corporate land grabs that had them fighting governments as well as the companies.
In Melancthon Township, 75 kilometres northwest of Toronto, two investment companies began buying farmland in a highland area that supplies fresh water to a large portion of Ontario.
The buyers said the plan was to build a huge potato processing plant for local potato farmers. By 2009, they had accumulated 8,000 acres.
Then, they started drilling for what they said was going to be an irrigation system.
As local cowboy and project opponent Carl Cosack told the story, it soon became clear they were planning a huge quarry and open pit mine that would use and contaminate hundreds of millions of litres of water.
He said the project initially promised that no more than a few of the purchased farms would be leveled, but the count is now 33 farmsteads and buildings torn down.
Cosack said governments support the project, and Ontario law requires no environmental assessment for a quarry.
“The fight continues,” he said. “We need public support.”
For Stephen Ogden, who spent 25 years fighting a dump proposal near Midland, Ont., the message is that people power can eventually defeat corporate power if citizens are mobilized.
He said a company started by buying 300 acres of prime farmland 146 km north of Toronto with a proposal to build a dump. Governments largely supported the project on company promises that it would not pollute the water table because the area had artisan pressurized upward water flow that would keep garbage suspended.
Years of badgering governments and winning broad public support, including a publicity walk from Midland to Toronto, eventually led the company to back off and governments to question the proposal.
“In the end, the political pressure was so great, they folded,” Ogden said.
“There is no dump but it took a quarter of a century. We are the power. Everybody can stand up. You have to engage your politicians. Don’t get mad at them. And smile.”
