Is the ‘Fight for Farmland’ really the best way to defend family farms and agricultural communities?

Protesters should be careful what they wish for…

Farmland is disappearing fast in Canada. 

About 100,000 hectares is being lost annually, mainly to urban and industrial development.

Family farms in this country are also disappearing fast.

The number of family-owned farms has fallen over 25% the last two decades, according to StatsCan.

In fact, the top 10% of farm owners in Canada control about 60% of the country's agricultural land — Big Ag corporations and pension funds foremost among them.

So it is understandable that at some point people in farm country would become alarmed and begin pushing back.

We told you recently about a protest against this trend that took place last month near Wilmot, Ontario, in the Regional Municipality of Waterloo.

With encouragement from the province, the RM had begun assembling hundreds of acres of land for future unspecified industrial development.

This exercise in land banking is basically a subsidy to crony corporations who are spared the time, energy and expense of acquiring their own land at market rates.

Instead, governments use their power of expropriation to grab land with lowball offers — or else.

Or else get expropriated.

But instead of fighting the power — the power of expropriation that threatens farmland and farm families and whole farming districts — protesters are focusing on the use of the land.

"Fighting for property rights, not against industrial development."

Defending a two hundred year old local farming tradition is certainly a romantic notion.

It is one that has evoked an emotional response from residents of the RM and all those who value food security in these inflationary times — and from those who value the quality of life that farming communities have always provided.

But is a romanticized political protest really the best bet?

As Canada’s leading grassroots property rights advocate, the Canadian Association of Energy and Pipeline Landowner Associations, (CAEPLA), we suggest another way.

CAEPLA believes the protesters at Wilmot ought to focus on the corrupt cause of the crisis, not the symptom.

The cause is governments’ power to expropriate.

The purpose of the expropriation is irrelevant — it could be for the expansion of suburbia to accommodate the hundreds of thousands of newcomers from around the globe arriving annually.

It could be for new windfarms or solar plants.

Or EV battery factories.

Or for something the protesters least suspect:

It could be for the clearance of farm families themselves.

To make way for corporate mega farms.

When government is prevented from destroying farmland but still permitted to expropriate, of course the politicians and central planners will simply expropriate smaller farms for the benefit of gigantic ones.

Expropriation-backed land banking by governments is an obvious addition to the tactics employed by crony corporatists who can already tax and regulate smaller farms out of existence.

So protesters should be careful what they wish for.

The real solution is to fight for your property rights.

Fighting for property rights, not against industrial development per se.

As a result, CAEPLA has, by rallying landowners under the banner of property rights, protected a whole lot of farms and ranches for over a quarter century now.

If you’re reading this, you probably know from firsthand experience that this can be done successfully.

And if you’re still reading this... we encourage you to forward this to family, friends and neighbours in the RM of Waterloo, or anywhere else farm families face threats from Big Government, their regulatory agencies and corporate cronies.

The bottom line is this.

You can "Fight for Farmland," and still lose your family's farm to expropriation.

Or you can fight for your property rights and keep your farmland.