In the speech he delivered at the annual convention of the Union des producteurs agricole (UPA), which he chairs, Martin Caron expressed his concern over a damning statistic: half of the agricultural land put up for sale over the past year have been purchased by non-farmers. Half the land!
Two things are striking in this observation. First, it is amazing to note that the UPA had to develop a watch on transactions in agricultural land. This key function should be the responsibility of a public body with significant powers and resources. In the absence of political will, the organization of agricultural producers had to replace the Quebec state. First problem.
Next, this statistic shows that the purchase of agricultural land by non-farmers is no longer a marginal phenomenon: it is a dynamic that is gaining momentum almost everywhere in Quebec. Real estate developers, portfolio managers, numbered companies are among the most active on the market.
These organizations not only have in common to speculate on the value of the land, but they actively contribute to destroying one of the bases of the Quebec agricultural model, namely the control of the land by the owner-operators of agricultural enterprises. With financial means that surpass those of the producers, these non-agricultural buyers find themselves pushing those whose profession is agriculture out of the game. Not to mention that by speculating on the conversion of agricultural land to other uses, they also crowd out agricultural activities from the local economy.
We had already seen the problem more than ten years ago, when investment funds, real estate speculators and other portfolio managers began to get seriously active in the agricultural field. We then observed that Quebec did not have the necessary means to meet its responsibilities. Despite the desires expressed by municipal, regional and national authorities to better protect agricultural land, we noted that there was no intervention tool to deal with the problem.
Ten years later, this observation still holds. Obviously, laws aimed at protecting the activities and vocation of agricultural land are no longer enough. There is a gaping hole in our institutional system.
To break with laissez-faire, we pleaded for the establishment of an instrument that would allow us to maintain our agricultural model and that would promote the development of land for the benefit of those who cultivate it and who produce to feed Quebec first. This instrument, the Société d’amenagement et de développement agricole (SADAQ), seems to us more relevant than ever. Such a society would make it possible to supplement the laws and regulations in force and would contribute to maintaining the vocation and activities on agricultural land.
Authorized to intervene on agricultural land by buying certain lands, this parapublic organization would have as its main objective to transfer these lands to professional producers and future candidates. It would serve as a sort of management structure to retain, for a time, land that a producer without succession would like to cede to another owner-operator, successor or not.
SADAQ could also acquire fallow agricultural land and work to recreate the conditions for bringing it into production. Supported by appropriate fiscal mechanisms, its interventions would aim for optimal development of the agricultural sector and help counter the devitalization that affects hundreds of rural communities across Quebec. Regions far from major centers have made the recultivation of fallow land one of their priorities for agricultural development.
Quebec must reconnect with initiative measures that have merit, such as the Act respecting the protection of agricultural land and agricultural activities in 1978. We have reached the limits of laissez-faire. The president of the UPA is right to worry about what is happening in the land trade. SADAQ still represents a means of action for Quebec agriculture. This is a solution that the Minister of Agriculture could deploy to demonstrate that he and his government really care about not leaving it to market forces alone to shape Quebec’s agricultural future.