Agrarian repair : agriculture, race and accumulation in contemporary Canada and South Africa ...

• Main Author: Sommerville, Melanie
• Format: Text
• Language: English
• Published: University of British Columbia 2019
• Subjects: First Nations
• Online Access: https://dx.doi.org/10.14288/1.0379208; https://doi.library.ubc.ca/10.14288/1.0379208

This dissertation explores certain agricultural investment projects emerging early in the new millennium which I term ‘agrarian repair’ projects. Proponents of these projects present them as binding together two distinct ‘fixes’. First, they seek to repair processes of capital accumulation and value preservation, always uncertain but freshly destabilized by the 2007/8 financial crisis. Second, they attempt to repair histories of colonial and racial injustice, often codified as resulting in and from a particular group’s historical ‘exclusion’ from agriculture and consequently larger national economies. I examine ‘agrarian repair’ projects at two sites, one in Canada and one in South Africa, where financial investors partnered with racialized, marginalized communities to establish large scale agricultural investment ventures. In Canada, One Earth Farms established a massive corporate grain, oilseeds and cattle farm engaging First Nations in the prairie provinces. In South Africa, the Futuregrowth Agri-Fund ...