When I graduated from a rural, southern Saskatchewan high school in the 1970s, our class included 38 individuals. Some grade 12 classes around that time had close to 50 graduates.
In mid-June this year, I visited my old school in this prairie town. It was reunion time and it also happened to be the time for graduation ceremonies for this year’s grade 12 class. Fifty years on, in 2023, there were a total of 12 graduates.
My class reunion was bitter sweet. Some classmates had passed. Some had weathered time well. Others not so much. Some were retired. Others are still working. Others were no longer farming. And a few classmates had inherited and added to already very large farms and had their progeny farming alongside them.
The town population itself has dwindled. There are fewer stores, and some houses—even on the major streets — are empty or neglected. The buses no longer run from this rural town to Moose Jaw or Regina.Public transportation is now non-existent. Not even a public van is available to get seniors to medical appointments with specialists.
The provincially run liquor board has now been privatized. The only good, steady paying job left in town is Canada Post. And possibly being posted with the local RCMP detachment.
The one new private business on main street is a cannabis cafe. It seems to be busy and its shades are always down, as locals duck in and out hoping not to be noticed.
The steeples of the cathedral still stand proud at the head of main street — but all of the grain elevators that once loomed equally high on the opposite end are gone. The only hardware store is closed. Its owner died and no one is stepping in as of yet. When I was growing up, the town had three grocery stores. It now has one — the Coop remains, testimony to the resilience of our prairie ancestors.
It’s my hometown… and I can still see the pride. But it’s weathered — a bit tattered, a little haggard. But not yet beaten down like so many others. There is a school, but declining enrolments have led the high school and the elementary school to start sharing the same building. There is a hospital, an old folks home, and a senior’s independent living building near it. There are apartments to rent and many houses to buy — enough places to live. But few jobs.
People on the town council disagree about what priorities should come first when cash is tight and the tax base is eroding. I heard it said that some smaller towns have just locked up the town office altogether, being nearly bankrupt.
The countryside this June was unusually lush. This is dryland grain farming country. Pure prairie. The green fields were uplifting to see, but there were more abandoned farms and buildings than what I recalled. Clumps of planted trees mark the landscape where farms had once been — farmsteads abandoned over the decades, and some since I last visited.
My former classmates spoke of offshore investors, money managers, land speculators.They are now out-pricing even very large family farmers for land, and making it near impossible for a younger generation to even consider owning a farm.
The number of semi-tractor trailers on the secondary roads — narrow, sometimes gravel — was both remarkable and unnerving.Even more rail lines had been pulled out, consolidating a practice begun decades ago. Farmstead grain bins seemed to have doubled in size and number — perhaps tripled in some cases. The view seemed at once sparser, and more populated by these large icons, silver storage bins.
I kept thinking about how so many people feel stuck in an urban environment, and hope to perhaps get out one day – to find quietude and a decent livelihood in an environment that isn’t violent or aggressive or overly competitive or overpopulated. And then there is this side of the prairies — sparseness and depopulation. Not enough people and not enough of a livelihood. But lots of space and fresh air (at least most of the time). Contradictions.
The prairie farm population has dropped dramatically over the last 70 years in Saskatchewan. Rather than acknowledging the role they play in dismantling once vibrant communities, though, corporate farms, justify their actions by spouting that they are essential to stopping hunger around the globe.
Does anyone still buy that line?
Meet big agriculture
“We are happy to discuss with you future plans for growth to feed the globe”, boasts Monette Farms’ website banner. Headquartered in Swift Current, Saskatchewan, it is one of the largest landholders on the prairies. It controls section upon section of farmland across Saskatchewan alongside newly-acquired cattle operations, and also has holdings in Montana and Arizona.
Andjelic Land Inc., owned by Albertan Robert Andjelic, is another prairie land giant, with control over at least 225,000 acres of land, or 313 square miles, peppered in various locations across Saskatchewan.
Andjelic is the largest farmland owner in Saskatchewan, and in Canada more broadly. In North America, it’s portfolio is second only to Bill Gates.
Andjelic Land Inc. owns land near my hometown, and some of my former high school classmates spoke generally about the competition.
Is this land consolidation inevitable? Is this progress?
Bigger is not better
The Conversation’s article Growing Farmland Inequality on the Prairies poses problems for all Canadians is a must read to understand the exponential impact of land concentration for society as a whole. The article analyzes how loss of family farms and corporate concentration of agricultural land affects the urban consumer and society in general.
Some research shows that small acreages have been by far the most productive and sustainable sources for farmers and their communities throughout the centuries. Jim Handy’s book Tiny Engines of Abundance details the remarkable productivity of small scale, polycrop farming, with case studies from around the world and beginning in 1750. As Handy notes in this webinar, small farmers have been portrayed as having a lifestyle of wretchedness and poverty too often throughout history, while larger and larger farm holdings have been touted as more efficient.
More recently Grain has published important information assessing farm size and productivity – and who really feeds the world. There is much more research that speaks to the benefits of smaller farms.
Canada’s responsibility
From Ontario through to the western provinces, the loss and concentration of agricultural land is an urgent issue.
This is no longer just an issue belonging to people in some far-off place in the world. Canada has signed the UN Declaration on the rights of farmers and rural workers — but it’s not clear how governments here intend to apply that right — or if action is even being considered.
As well, corporate mergers and concentration are occurring on all fronts: Loblaw’s, Metro, and Sobey’s dominate grocery stores,. Bunge and Viterra, two already huge grain transnationals, just announced that they are merging this past June.
The mergers will have a major impact on communities and consumers, here in Canada, and beyond. Where is Canada’s Competition Bureau on this?
There is indeed a pending food crisis on the horizon.But land speculation, loss of farmland, and corporate concentration and mergers will only remove our ability to deal with the impact of climate change on our food supply. The pending crisis not simply the result of climate issues, but also the result of corporate greed and unmitigated corporate concentration in production, distribution and retail of food.
It’s time to step up and begin considering serious limits on land size, the loss of agricultural land to developers, and curtailing corporate mergers that seriously impact communities and society more generally. There are ways to advance…. is there a will?
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