The National Farmers Union is calling on Ottawa to review lending guidelines at Farm Credit Canada.Darrin Qualman, director of research with the NFU, says Farm Credit Canada – a taxpayer owned, federally controlled agricultural lending agency – should not be financing the acquisition of Canadian farmland by investment companies.On June 4, the NFU released a report that scrutinized FCC lending practices and highlighted FCC lending agreements with Assiniboia Capital Corp., a Regina-based company that raises private capital and uses it to buy Canadian farmland through a limited partnership arrangement.Assiniboia bills itself as the largest farmland investment management company in Canada, with almost 100,000 acres under management.“Assiniboia has tripled its land base over the past two years,” the NFU report stated.“In this light, it is interesting to learn that Assiniboia’s primary capital source is taxpayer-owned and federal-government controlled Farm Credit Canada.”In a subsequent interview, Qualman said lending practices that permit FCC to lend money to investment companies are undermining the interests of Canadian farm families and are detrimental to rural communities across the country.“The federal government really needs to stop and think about which side of this policy they’re on,” said Qualman. “Does (government) support and encourage the transfer of land from farm families to investors or does it want to discourage that type of activity?“(Ottawa) needs to put the farm back in Farm Credit Canada,” he said. “It’s not investor buy-up Canada. It’s not large corporation Canada…. It’s Farm Credit Canada and it really needs to focus on farms and farmers.”Michael Hoffort, vice-president of prairie operations for FCC, said all financing arrangements involving FCC are thoroughly scrutinized to ensure that relevant laws and lending guidelines are honoured.“In the case of any of our customers, we would have done an assessment and made an eligibility decision on that to make sure that we are (operating within) our mandate, our act and the rules that are established provincially (for farmland ownership),” Hoffort said.He said there are many different types of farmland ownership arrangements in Canada“And in any of those cases where we’ve made a loan, we’ve made sure that we’ve operated … within what we feel is the spirit of … our legislation.”
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