Losing our grip - 2015 update

National Farmers Union | 10 March 2015

In 2010 the National Farmers Union published a major report called “Losing Our Grip: How Corporate Farmland Buy-up, Rising Farm Debt, and Agribusiness Financing of Inputs Threaten Family Farms and Food Sovereignty”. With our 2015 update, we are revisiting that report to see how the situation has changed.

Medium_losing_our_grip_-_2015_update_cover
Read the full Losing Our Grip - 2015 Update report
Download a PDF of the Executive Summary
 

”We need the Lands Protection Act to protect us from the incredible wealth of people who live just beyond our borders and see our land as nothing more than a commodity to be bought and sold, like silver or gold.

Horace Carver, Q.C. | Lands Protection Act Commissioner, PEI (2013)

Executive Summary:

A recent Agriculture and Agrifood Canada survey confirmed that Canadians want and expect farmland to be owned and worked by the local farm families, individual farmers, producer co-ops and intentional communities who farm the land. But this system is under serious threat by corporations and investors –including some of our own pension funds – that are seeking greater control over Canada’s agriculture and a bigger share of the wealth that farmers produce.
 
As in 2010, the issue today is not only a matter of who owns the farmland, but of farmer autonomy and control. The men and women who produce our food need to have a stable, resilient economic base that will allow them to make good long-term decisions for their farms, our food system and our environment. When farmers are in a position to make long-term decisions they can put sustainability of ecosystems ahead of immediate revenues. Long-term thinking is also concerned with community-building, which enriches Canada’s diverse land-based cultures. It provides both the ability and the motivation to retain the knowledge and skills of farming in the next generation. Long-term thinking also deals with protecting the land, water and atmosphere for future generations by acting now to slow down and reverse climate change.

Read more or download the report from the National Farmers Union website.
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