Daniel Rotman
Executive Director
Published on
Quebec’s next government will face many challenges. The economic situation is particularly difficult, with the cost of living and food insecurity affecting a large share of the population. These everyday crises often conceal other equally troubling and tangible developments that are undermining our collective resilience. Away from public attention, our food sovereignty is declining as our farmland is steadily degraded and lost.
This may sound alarmist, but it is based on long-standing trends that have intensified over several years.
On the one hand, farmland prices are soaring, making it increasingly difficult for the next generation of farmers to enter the profession. On the other, our limited supply of farmland is shrinking every day, jeopardizing our ability to feed ourselves with locally produced food.
How did we get here? More importantly, how can we work together—with the support of our next government—to reverse this trend?
Making farmland disappear: our new national sport?
Let us be clear: once farmland is destroyed, it is lost forever. The organic matter that makes our soil fertile takes thousands of years to develop. We should therefore think twice before burying it under concrete to make way for sprawling suburbs or data centres.
Unfortunately, we have ignored this reality for decades. The result?
In less than 30 years, Quebec has lost 61,000 hectares of arable land—the equivalent of 45 hockey rinks every day.
At this rate, making farmland disappear is well on its way to becoming our national sport.
Yet our agricultural soil is a scarce resource. Despite Quebec’s vast territory, only 2% of it is suitable for agriculture—barely 0.24 hectares per person. We therefore have very little room to manoeuvre when it comes to strengthening our food sovereignty.
Despite this, our farmland is too often treated like a Monopoly board. Financial interests and large corporations purchase land solely to generate profits. The result is staggering: farmland costs 10 times more today than it did 20 years ago. Clearly, speculating on and financializing our land has proven lucrative.
This dramatic rise in prices has very real consequences for agriculture. As major players accumulate land, small and medium-sized properties are becoming increasingly scarce. The next generation of farmers is struggling to access affordable land while already facing enormous financial pressures.
This situation raises serious questions about the ability of future generations to enter agriculture—and, consequently, about our collective capacity to produce local food over the long term.
Practical solutions rooted in experience
Despite the scale of the challenge, we believe Quebec’s next government can change the situation by adopting ambitious measures. The Alliance SaluTERRE is proposing the following practical solutions.
First, to provide successive governments with permanent, transparent and independent guidance, Quebec must establish an agricultural land observatory.
Among other responsibilities, this body would create a registry of agricultural land transactions, analyze the factors driving up farmland prices and recommend measures to better protect the territory.
Next, to curb the dramatic rise in farmland prices, a significant amount of agricultural land must be removed from the speculative market. This could be achieved by establishing a government fund to support the conversion of numerous privately owned agricultural properties into agroecological social-purpose trusts—a legal structure that protects the agricultural and ecological use of land in perpetuity.
Together, these measures would give us a clearer picture of agricultural land ownership and enable targeted action to protect farmland, while making it easier for the next generation of farmers to gain access to it.
Food sovereignty concerns us all
Given the limited size of our agricultural territory, the disappearance of farmland and its acquisition by powerful interests, Quebec must do more to protect its agriculture.
In the face of geopolitical, economic and climate upheaval, strengthening our food sovereignty is not a luxury—it is a necessity. Yet barely 35% of the food we eat is grown here. We must make better use of our fields by prioritizing the production of a diverse range of foods for local consumption.
The next government will have a crucial role to play in achieving this transition. Our collective role is to keep reminding it of that responsibility until sufficient progress has been made. After all, food sovereignty concerns every one of us.
Signatories member of the Alliance SaluTERRE:
Chantal de Montigny, Director of Local Food Systems, Vivre en Ville; Hubert Lavallée, President, Protec-Terre; Carianne Lemire, President, Fédération de la relève agricole du Québec (FRAQ); Judith Colombo, Executive Director, Collectif Récolte; Véronique Bouchard, President, Réseau des fermier(ière)s de famille; Anick Béland Morin, Executive Director, Marché de proximité de Québec; Thibault Rehn, Executive Director, Vigilance OGM; Jessica Dufresne, lawyer specializing in the right to food; Jean-Nick Trudel, Executive Director, Association des marchés publics du Québec; Anne Marie Aubert, Coordinator, Conseil du système alimentaire montréalais (CSAM).
