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.
This started way back in the 2000s and has snow-balled the last 10 years. And it’s not just farmland. There are investment funds of the rich who are buying up forests and vast tracks of land around the globe as investment properties for long term holding.
It was pretty common back in the '90s.
My family was approached several times by people representing foreign corporate buyers trying to buy our farm.
A few older farmers sold because they were getting too old to keep working and their kids had no interest in farming.