Sask. farmers, researchers worry investor-bought land 'empties out the countryside'

As Terry Boehm sits on a tractor-powered snowblower on a cold winter day and clears a path to his shop, the grain and seed producer thinks about a more important path: the one his town and its young farmers will travel moving forward.

Boehm comes from a long line of farmers near Colonsay, Sask., starting from when his great grandfather arrived more than 100 years ago to the area, about 50 kilometres southeast of Saskatoon.

Saskatchewan, a resource-rich province, makes up about 40 per cent of Canada's farmland. Family farms like Boehm's own the vast majority of it, but researchers say large agriculture companies or investors who rent out farmland now control about two per cent.

Boehm, who has long advocated for farmers' rights, and researchers say this trend could speed up rising costs and force smaller, local farmers to expand or get out of the industry altogether, which could ultimately lead to fewer people in small rural communities.

"This is creating a situation where farmers are really the cash cow to be milked on every teat," Boehm told CBC News. 

André Magnan, an associate professor in the department of sociology and social studies at the University of Regina, said that in the last decade and a half, more institutional investors, private investors and corporations have become interested in owning farmland in Saskatchewan.

"The amount of land that they own across the board is not huge in terms of percentage, but in certain cases they may own tens of thousands of acres or even more sometimes," he said.

Magnan said buying farmland is used as a strategy to diversify a person or company's portfolio and to hedge risks such as inflation.

While it's a good investment, it's a blow to small towns, Magnan said.

"What we're finding is that ownership is in fewer and fewer hands and that has a really tangible effect on local communities. It empties out the countryside," he said.

He and Boehm worry that if fewer people are involved in agriculture, it will be more difficult to sustain services such as schools and hospitals in small towns.

"Most communities are withering. There simply aren't enough people," Boehm said.

"Just being able to have enough people to be engaged in the day-to-day requirements of operating in a small community, it falls on less and less shoulders."

Katherine Aske, a field co-ordinator at the University of British Columbia (UBC) Farm, was recently part of a research team based at the University of Manitoba looking into how farmland tenure is changing on the Prairies.