Common Ground Food Forum 2026, Lakehead University Orillia Campus

Tuesday, June 16, 2026 – 10:30 am to 12:00 noon ET

My name is Christy Kelly-Bisson, my pronouns are they/them, and I am the co-lead for the Land and People Pillar of the Common Ground Network, and I work as a research assistant out of Dalhousie University in Halifax. I research and write about farmland grabs, past and present, in northeastern Turtle Island. I am also a market gardener in the small, rural community of Sulieweykikt, in Mi’kma’ki.

Farmland is a subject that is deeply connected to First Nations and settler relations in so-called Canada, which compels us to always ask whose land we are on. I live, work, and farm on the land of Wasoqopa’q First Nation in the region of Kespukwitk, Mi’kma’ki. 

Today we are meeting in the land of the Ojibwe Anishinaabe nation, and as settlers here we are governed by the terms of Williams Treaties and Upper Canada Treaties.

Farm and food lands are what tethers all of us biophysically to the Earth. The food we eat is a combination of the soil, water, and sun, articulated by an ecosystem of plants and animals, into the very precise matter we need to sustain our lives. This makes land tenure a vital component to how we relate to each other and the earth. Unjust and unsustainable relationships to the land bind us into systems of exploitation and undermines the life-giving capacity of the ecosystems that feed us. Just and sustainable relationships to the land can bring us to emancipatory social possibilities and ways of supporting human life lasting for generations beyond our imaginations. Farm and food lands in Canada are primarily organized into private properties, which has a fraught history of settler-colonialism, capitalist accumulation, and financialization. Farmland properties, however, for many settlers in Canadian history put the means of food production directly in the hands of many those who work the land, a key condition necessary for food sovereignty. The land tenure security that private property gives us, in other words, embodies the paradox advanced by French philosopher Pierre-Joseph Proudhon in his Theory of Property, “La propriété, c’est le vol; la propriété, c’est la liberté”. That is, property is theft, property is liberty. 

This roundtable discussion will delve into this fraught territory of land tenure by discussing the colonial frontiers of agricultural expansion into First Nations lands; the growing dominance of corporate farms and farmland investors in the countryside; just alternative forms of land tenure; and the imperative to give stolen land back to Indigenous nations.

Our discussion today will be with members of Common Ground’s Land and People Pillar (LAPP). If you have not heard of us, we are a group of academic and civil society researchers working to facilitate collaboration within the social sciences and humanities around the topic of land relations and land use in Canadian food systems. The network operates through four goals: formalize the coordination of expertise on the subject, connecting across disciplines to identify research gaps, develop holistic sustainability goals, and providing resources where they are most needed. Our group focuses on two broad topics: Land justice and sustainable land use in food production.

Our roundtable participants today are:

• André Magnan, who is a Professor of Sociology and Social Studies at the University of Regina.
• Sarah Rotz who is an Associate Professor in the Faculty of Environmental and Urban Change at York University
• Andrew Spring who is an Assistant Professor in the Department of Geography and Environmental Studies at Wilfrid Laurier University
• Sarah Marquis, who is the Outreach Strategist for National Farmers Union
• Jess Tong who is the Land Access and Outreach Coordinator – National Farmers Union-Ontario
• Richard Bloomfield who is a PhD candidate at University of Western Ontario.

Roundtable Questions:

1. I want to begin this morning’s discussion with a question to situate your work relative to the topic of land and people. Briefly, how does your work connect to the topic of land relations and sustainable land use?
2. My next question is for Sarah Rotz and Andrew. In the last year we have seen a renewed fervor among provincial, territorial, and federal governments to expand the frontier of resource extraction and agriculture into northern and remote areas. The Ford Government in Ontario, for instance, recently introduced Bill 109, Protecting Ontario’s Food Independence Act, which among many other amendments seeks to expand cash crop production into Mushkegowuk, Omàmiwininiwak, and Ojibweg land. At the same time, First Nations, Métis, and Inuit communities throughout northern Turtle Island have worked to advance local food sovereignty amid outrageous food prices through harvesting and gardening initiatives. How do you see these power struggles over northern food lands unfolding in the near future, and what can they tell us about how we ought to approach food land tenure security?
3. This question is for André, Richard, Sarah Marquis, and Jess. The historical image of the so-called family farm seems to be vanishing lately. The average age of a farmer in Canada is in the 50s and the cost of farmland is now well out of reach for what most new farmers can afford. There appears to be two trajectories for farmland tenure emerging as a result. On the one hand there are processes of capitalist accumulation resulting in massive farm corporations and financialization establishing a growing population of tenant farmers. On the other hand, we are seeing the proliferation of small-scale farms and the emergence of community land trusts and cooperatives as a mechanism for new farmers to gain secure land tenure. How do you see the consolidation of farmland around corporations and investors proceeding in the next few years, and what lessons are we learning from those who are experimenting with alternative forms of farmland tenure?
4. This question is for everyone. We discussed the tensions around agricultural expansion into First Nations land and the corporate consolidation of farmland. But there is a tension between those two questions as well. Here we have two things that are equally true: Indigenous communities face neo-colonial extraction that threatens their food land tenure, and settler farmers are being squeezed out of operation and losing their farmland tenure. In both cases land is increasingly controlled by corporations and wealthy individuals at the expense of everyone’s food sovereignty. Recognizing that we are all settlers on this panel it seems most appropriate to discuss what action settlers should take to bring about justice in this dilemma. How do we approach the formation of pro-farmer land tenure alternatives in ways that centre and prioritize giving land back to Indigenous nations?