Another corporate farming operation based in Western Canada is getting out of primary crop production.
MaxCrop Farm Canada Inc., a corporate farming operation with offices in Regina and Vancouver, is the latest corporate entity to scale back its involvement in planting and harvesting prairie grain.
MaxCrop is holding a farm dispersal auction May 15 at Melfort, Sask.
Hodgins Auctioneers of Melfort is conducting the auction.
Items on the bill include tractors, combines, swathers, drills, grain carts and a variety of other farm equipment.
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It is unclear whether MaxCrop is getting out of the crop production business entirely or if it is simply selling assets attached to one Saskatchewan-based farming unit.
Calls to the company’s office in Regina were not returned.
On its website, MaxCrop lists its chair as former Saskatchewan agriculture minister and NDP MLA Mark Wartman.
Attempts to reach Wartman were also unsuccessful.
MaxCrop has been buying Saskatchewan farmland for the past few years.
In 2012, officials with the company told the Western Producer that MaxCrop landholdings in Saskatchewan amounted to roughly 70,000 acres in four different regions of the province.
The corporation, run by Chinese-Canadian businessperson Andy Hu, consists of three separate companies including a real estate operation that buys farmland, a land management company that manages land for absentee investors and a farming operation involved in primary production, processing and value-added exporting.
MaxCrop’s real estate company buys farmland and offers it to individual investors who qualify under Saskatchewan’s farmland ownership laws.
In 2012, the corporation leased approximately 90 percent of the land in its portfolio back to local farmers.
MaxCrop also operated its own farm in east-central Saskatchewan near Sheho, Sask.
The May 15 farm equipment auction in Melfort follows close on the heels of a March announcement that another corporate farming operation, One Earth Farms, is also getting out of primary crop production.
One Earth Farms is a subsidiary of Toronto-based investment company Sprott Resource Corp.
In 2009, Sprott announced that One Earth Farms would become the largest commercial farm in Canada, consisting of approximately one million acres of land across Western Canada, much of it leased from First Nations groups in Saskatchewan and Alberta.
At its height in 2012, One Earth had plans to seed approximately 100,000 acres.
However, One Earth operations have since been scaled back.
In its 2013 year-end financial report released earlier this year, Sprott officials confirmed that One Earth will “exit crop operations and focus efforts instead on cattle and branded food divisions.”
One Earth recently completed the acquisition of another agricultural subsidiary, Beretta Farms, which specializes in the production of organic and antibiotic–free beef.
In 2013, One Earth’s beef herd was estimated at roughly 17,000 head.
Sprott Resource Corp owned a 54 percent share of One Earth Farms as of Dec.3 1, 2013.
Losses attributed to Sprott’s agricultural operations in 2013 were estimated at $17 million.
Shares of Sprott Resources on the Toronto Stock Exchange were trading in a range of $2.50 to $2.70 per share this week, down from $4.28 per share a year ago.
