First Nations should demand at-market lease rates: Lerat

First Nations need to stop leasing out their land to non-Indigenous farmers for below-market prices, says farmer and band councillor Terry Lerat of Cowessess First Nation in south-central Saskatchewan. Instead, bands should be getting every penny they can for the farmland they own and using that money to get themselves back into farming.

“Take those benefits and build up our own farms ourselves, and help our own people,” said Lerat during a panel discussion at Ag in Motion hosted by the National Circle for Indigenous Agriculture and Food and Farm Credit Canada.

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Lerat said his own band was leasing out some of its best farmland for $60 per acre, when the actual market value was probably around $120 per acre. When the band began holding back some of its land as leases expired, so that it could expand its own farming, lessors got worried. One quickly offered to boost his payments to $95 per acre.

“You should be pulling four per cent off that, maybe five per cent (of the sales value of the best land,)” said Lerat. Lerat said many bands are being too passive with their farmland leasing practices.

“We shouldn’t be sitting in our office waiting for people to come and ask to lease it. We should be putting an offer to lease in the local (news)papers and let these guys drive up their own price—and they will. It’s supply and demand. We have the supply.”

Most reserves own significant amounts of arable land. Collectively, First Nations are the biggest owners of farmland in Canada, a panelist said. Yet few people in Indigenous communities are active farmers, something all three panelists said is both a pity and a lost opportunity for economic self-sufficiency.

Lerat said he and his band have built up significant farming operations and plan for more. He’d like to see much more, with Indigenous people operating farms and providing the labour needed to farm their own land. At-market lease payments could supply a stream of capital that First Nations farms could employ to expand their own farms. Lerat said.