AGRARIAN REPAIR: AGRICULTURE, RACE, AND ACCUMULATION IN CONTEMPORARY CANADA AND SOUTH AFRICA by Melanie Sommerville B.Sc. Honours, University of Guelph, 2000 M.A., Carleton University, 2006 A THESIS SUBMITTED IN PARTIAL FULFILLMENT OF THE REQUIREMENTS FOR THE DEGREE OF DOCTOR OF PHILOSOPHY in THE FACULTY OF GRADUATE AND POSTDOCTORAL STUDIES (Geography) THE UNIVERSITY OF BRITISH COLUMBIA (Vancouver) May 2019 © Melanie Sommerville, 2019 The following individuals certify that they have read, and recommend to the Faculty of Graduate and Postdoctoral Studies for acceptance, the dissertation entitled: Agrarian Repair: Agriculture, Race, and Accumulation in Contemporary Canada and South Africa submitted by Melanie Sommerville in partial fulfillment of the requirements for the degree of Doctor of Philosophy in Geography Examining Committee: Dr. Philippe Le Billon, Geography Co-supervisor Dr. Jim Glassman, Geography Co-supervisor Dr. Merje Kuus, Geography Supervisory Committee Member Dr. Juanita Sundberg, Geography University Examiner Dr. Hannah Wittman, Land and Food Systems University Examiner Additional Supervisory Committee Members: Supervisory Committee Member Supervisory Committee Member ii Abstract 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 implemented investment models involving African communities in the commercial fruit sector across the country. I trace the historical origins of the projects, situating them in two concurrent transitions unfolding in their respective national settings: one in the organization of the agrarian economy, the other in the orientation of the nation-state towards a liberal democratic ‘reconciliatory’ dispensation. I detail the specific logics, modalities, and mechanics employed by the ‘agrarian repair’ projects, reflecting on how they can advance understandings of financialized racial capitalism and its operations at the settler colonial agrarian interface. I assess the projects’ capacity to deliver on their purported fixes, showing that agriculture neither proves to be the stable financial provider that investors expect, nor do the projects deliver their anticipated social results. Benefits for the racialized communities engaged are uneven at best, while the projects actively exploit not only settler colonial and racial legacies but also contemporary redress efforts, generating new advantages and valuation iii channels for investors. The research lends insights into how colonial and racialized histories and reparative movements are mobilized and monetized in contemporary agricultural projects. This allows me to begin outlining a larger schema of reparative capitalism, whereby capitalism incorporates its critiques – here about its colonial and racial past – as new sites of accumulation. iv Lay Summary This dissertation examines recent agricultural investment projects engaging First Nations in Canada and black African communities in South Africa. Investment managers suggest that these projects will generate both economic returns for investors and social returns for the communities, whose participation in commercial agriculture has been limited under colonialism and, in South Africa, apartheid. However, the projects struggle to deliver on either of these promises. Financial returns are unstable or non-existent. Social returns are uneven and in fact the projects perpetuate certain of the colonial and racial dynamics they claim to help address while exploiting broader redress efforts for investors’ benefit. I reflect on how the projects can help us to understand the contemporary capitalist economic system, wherein capital attempts to incorporate critiques of its colonial and racial past and turn them into new sites of profit-making. v PreFace This dissertation is based on independent research completed by the author, Melanie Sommerville. I identified the research sites and designed the research program, performed the vast majority of the research, and analyzed the resulting data. Some of the material in Chapter 5 is based on raw data provided by Dr. Ruth Hall (Institute for Poverty, Land and Agrarian Studies, University of the Western Cape, Bellville, South Africa), Dr. Thembela Kepe (Department of Geography and Planning, University of Toronto Scarborough, Canada) and by Hazel Friedman (Senior Producer, Special Investigation, South African Broadcasting Corporation). Drs. Hall and Kepe provided information on two of 66 sites identified in the chapter, and Ms. Friedman on one additional site. A version of Chapter 3 has been published on-line (print edition forthcoming). Sommerville, Melanie. (2018) Naturalising finance, financialising natives: Indigeneity, race and ‘responsible’ agricultural investment in Canada. Antipode. https://doi.org/10.1111/anti.12395. I conducted the research for and authored this paper independently. Additionally, some of the data from Chapter 3 was also published in an earlier article. Sommerville, Melanie and André Magnan. (2015) ‘Pinstripes on the prairies’: Examining the financialization of farming systems in the Canadian prairie provinces. The Journal of Peasant Studies. 42(1):119-144. Dr. André Magnan conducted the research for the ‘Farmland investment funds’ section of the article, and he originally wrote the ‘Introduction’ and ‘Discussion’ sections of the piece as well. I conducted the research underlying the ‘Exchange traded farming corporations’ section of the article, and originally wrote the ‘Financialization and financial investment in agro-food sectors’ and ‘Factors underlying financial investment in prairie farmland and agriculture’ sections of the piece. vi The research was approved by the UBC Behavioral Research Ethics Board: Certificate numbers H10-02953 and H13-02467; Principal Investigator: Dr. Philippe Le Billon. vii Table oF Contents Abstract ......................................................................................................................................... iii Lay Summary .................................................................................................................................v Preface ........................................................................................................................................... vi Table of Contents ....................................................................................................................... viii List of Tables ................................................................................................................................ xi List of Figures .............................................................................................................................. xii List of Abbreviations ................................................................................................................. xiii Acknowledgements .................................................................................................................... xix Dedication .................................................................................................................................. xxii Chapter 1: Agrarian Repair ........................................................................................................ 1 1.1 Introduction ................................................................................................................. 1 1.2 Introducing Agrarian Repair ....................................................................................... 2 1.3 Comparing Canada and South Africa ....................................................................... 16 1.4 Positionality, Methodology, Ethics ........................................................................... 27 1.5 Broken Repairs? ........................................................................................................ 32 Chapter 2: Finance, Farming and First Nations in the Canadian Prairies ........................... 36 2.1 Introduction: In Fort Qu’Appelle .............................................................................. 36 2.2 The Structure and Organization of Farming on the Canadian Prairies ..................... 42 2.3 A New Era for Prairie Agriculture? .......................................................................... 52 2.4 The Troubling History of First Nations Farming on the Prairies .............................. 59 2.5 ‘The Land is Everything’ .......................................................................................... 68 viii 2.6 Land Management and Administration on Reserves ...............................................