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.

  • psvrh
    3·
    7 months ago

    A handful of years ago, I read an article which concluded that unrestrained capitalism will inevitably result in an entire industry sector being controlled by roughly three companies, working as a collusive oligopoly.

    This was a punchline in Kurt Vonnegut’s Jailbird