Settler colonial grabs now: Christopher Bisson, The Long Grab: Dispossession in Southeastern Kitchi Sipi Valley, from Colonization to Financialization, PhD dissertation, University of Ottawa, 2024 | settler colonial studies blog

Settler colonial grabs now: Christopher Bisson, The Long Grab: Dispossession in Southeastern Kitchi Sipi Valley, from Colonization to Financialization, PhD dissertation, University of Ottawa, 2024

20May24

Abstract: This thesis examines changes in the distribution of farmland in the southeast of the Kitchi Sipi (Ottawa) Valley between 2000 and 2017. It originally hypothesized that financialization would be the leading cause of a recent wave of farmland grabs in the area based on the findings of existing literature, which observed that financial investment companies are primarily responsible for the phenomenon (Gheller, 2018; Sommerville, 2018; Le Billon and Sommerville, 2017; Desmarais et al., 2015). The land distribution study conducted for this thesis suggests that the farmland grabbing that recently occurred in the study area was primarily led by existing large-scale corporate family farms. This is different from the land distribution study of Desmarais et al. (2015), which showed that financial investment firms were the dominant actors recently engaged in farmland grabbing in Saskatchewan. This suggests that there are a variety of different actors involved in the recent farmland grab phenomena in so-called Canada that have not been studied, which invites deeper theoretical consideration of the broader political-economic processes at play. The thesis therefore presents a “long grab” theoretical framework to explain how different kinds of settler-capitalist elites are able to command large holdings of farmland in a particular area. This thesis conducts case study and long-term historical materialist analysis of the development and evolution of farming and property rights in the study area to explain the absence of financial investment firms buying farmland. It identifies three key political-economic factors that limited farmland accumulation by investment companies: aggressive expansion of existing commercial farms, municipal land use policies aimed at limiting urban sprawl, and the impact of urban growth on local farmland values. This analysis demonstrates that long-standing land conflicts inherent to settler-capitalist development influences what kinds of political-economic elites engage in farmland grabbing in a particular area.

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