When asked if young, aspiring farmers ever inquired about buying his farm, Marcus Collinson just laughs.
“No young farmers are buying farms,” he said, adding it’s why he sold his four properties southwest of London, Ont., to an investor in May and June 2020.
The Toronto-based company that bought them is Bonnefield, Canada’s first and largest farm real estate investment corporation. It holds more than $1.4 billion in assets across seven provinces, representing 140,000 acres (nearly 56,656 hectares) of farmland, according to its website.
According to Ontario land registry records, Bonnefield shows up as the owner in 464 premises identification numbers (PIDs), from northern to southern Ontario. Each PID is linked to a specific parcel of land rather than a business or a person.
They misspelled “utterly fucked over for corporate profit.”
edit: Real estate is now unaffordable for an entire generation - thanks to “investors.” They’ll not only do the same to agriculture, but consequently to agricultural products. Expect to see artificial shortages, increased prices, declining quality, and occasional outbreaks of horror (the current discrepancy between Canada and the US for H5N1 will be erased, for instance).
But it’s all worth it in the end, because some billionaires will get incrementally richer.