Legal Institutions of Farmland Succession: Implications for Sustainable Food Systems

The legal institutions relevant to farmland succession—defined as the transfer of property in and control over farmland—are increasingly important determinants of sustainable environmental outcomes on modern farms. The history of farmland succession has been written, by and large, through extra-legal processes of transfer and inheritance between generations of close family relations. This familiar “family farm” model, however, is rapidly being replaced by succession arrangements between non-relatives, often strangers, with entrant farmers from non-agricultural backgrounds. As a growing number of current farmers retire and seek creative ways to transfer control and ownership of their farms, the availability and content of property arrangements on farmlands acquire a new significance. The resulting “formalization” of farmland succession places greater demands on suitable to a wider diversity of needs, particularly among small farmers, and to consider the impacts of these arrangements for sustainable food systems over the longer term. Environmental degradation of farmland resources and surrounding ecosystems in Ontario, Canada—the focus of this study—and elsewhere is by now a well-established trend. This result, it seems, is aligned with the eroded perception that farmlands are no longer “natural” resources at all. As agricultural products are increasingly treated like any other mass-produced commodity, their sites of production are likewise distinguished from, and placed in opposition to, the natural environment. One feature of this dissociation between agriculture and the environment is that farmlands and food production are, as Wendell Berry describes, divorced from their historical contexts: To the extent that we participate in the industrial economy, we do not know the histories of our families or of our habits or of our meals. This is an economy, and in fact a culture, of the one-night stand. I had a good time,” says the industrial lover, “but don’t ask me my last name.” Just so, the industrial enter says to the svelte hog, “We’ll be together at breakfast. I don’t want to see you before then, and I won’t care to remember you afterwards.” In part, the new social, economic and political realities of farm production are now being constructed through the legal institutions and instruments that determine paths of farmland succession. Berry reminds us that attention to the way that these processes have been carried out in the past, as well s the ways in which they are changing, can help to reconnect food production with positive environmental outcomes, including reduced reliance on harmful pesticides and other chemical inputs, improved soil, air and water quality management, increased biodiversity, and a reduced threat of farmland loss. In this Essay, I argue that when farmland tenure for entrant farmers is made more secure, they will have better incentives to engage practices and investments that produce these environmental benefits, and they will have improved capacity to achieve this through access to land and credit markets. Part II of this Essay describes the modern socioeconomic context of farming in my case study of the province of Ontario in Canada and discusses the specific content of “environmental benefits” to which farmland tenure policies should be directed. Part III outlines briefly how farmland succession has evolved from the family farm model. Part IV develops an account of the legal institutions connecting farmland tenure security and positive environmental outcomes, which leads to an evaluation, in Part V, of environmental impacts of various land tenure arrangements available to parties to succession agreements. Finally, in Part VI, some of institutional conditions surrounding land tenure at the municipal level are discussed

Precarious Pathways: Evaluating the Provincial Nominee Programs in Canada

Temporary foreign workers in Canada experience substandard employment relationships, are explicitly denied many formal rights and are practically excluded from most employment protections. Led by a growing emphasis on workers’ temporary status as a root cause of their employment-related vulnerabilities, some advocates, as well as elected officials, are now calling on governments to improve opportunities for workers to attain permanent residency in Canada, primarily for those in lower-skilled occupations. The central aim of this paper is to evaluate whether Provincial Nominee Programs are likely to address the real insecurities faced by vulnerable lower-skilled temporary foreign workers. Given that there are multiple potential pathways that could be designed for temporary workers to make the transition to permanent residency, a basic assumption of this study is that different paths are likely to lead to substantially different outcomes for workers, as well as for employers and communities. In all cases, these diverging outcomes should be assessed in terms of their overall efficacy at confronting individual workers’ current insecurities and in terms of their long-term effects on governments’ abilities to coordinate pathways between provincial jurisdictions and with the federal government

Esther Inglis: A Franco-Scottish Jacobean Writer and her \u3cem\u3eOctonaries upon the Vanitie and Inconstancie of the World\u3c/em\u3e

This article draws attention to the hitherto ignored poetry of the Franco-Scottish Jacobean calligrapher and limner, Esther Inglis (c.1570 -1624). Inglis is the subject of a fast growing body of published scholarship, but though she left a small body of original prose and verse, she has been given no place in Scottish literature. The article falls into six sections. The substantial first section notes first that to date, there has been a tendency to shy away from dealing with her as a writer, and that Inglis’s formative Scottish background has been largely ignored. The second section looks at Inglis and her family in Edinburgh, as well-integrated Huguenot bourgeois immigrants. The short third section considers Inglis’s spiritual reading material, and the lengthier fourth contextualises and then analyses the three commendatory sonnets that preface several of her productions. The short fifth section briefly survey Inglis herself as an author, and the sixth introduces the fifty Octonaries upon the Vanitie and Inconstancie of the World, which are currently known in only three manuscripts she created before 1610. The article itself is followed by the first-ever printed text of Inglis\u27s Octonaries, textual notes with variants among the three manuscripts, and three appendices. NOTE: the current file (July 14 2023) represents the final corrected version; if you have consulted a previous version, you may need to refresh your browser. SSL Ed

Appendices to Inglis, Octonaries: Titles and Dedications from other MSS, MSS Containing the ‘G.D.’ and ‘Velde’ Sonnets, Who Was ‘G.D.’?

Three Appendices to the preceding article on Esther Inglis\u27s Octonaries: (1) transcribe the Titles and Dedications in other manuscripts; (2) record the five MSS containing the ‘G.D.’ and ‘Velde’ Sonnets discussed in the article; and (3) review possibilities for the identity of \u27G.D.\u27, proposing that it was George Douglas, a gifted vernacular poet and translator of Boethius.NOTE: the current file (June 25 2023) includes minor corrections. Please refresh your browser if you downloaded a previous version. SSL Ed

Posthumous Preaching: James Melville\u27s Ghostly Advice in Ane Dialogue (1619), with an Edition from the Manuscript

Discusses the use of the dialogue in Renaissance Scotland, and explores the background, themes, and dramatic art of Ane Dialogue (1619), concerning the Five Articles of Perth (1618), and resistance to the church policies of King James VI & I; gives character-sketches of the four speakers, James Melville, William Balcanquhall, Archibald Johnstone, and John Smyth, and of their satiric target, the Edinburgh minister William Struthers; concludes by providing an annotated edition of the dialogue transcribed from the sole manuscript, National Library of Scotland, Wodrow Quarto LXXXIV, ff. 19-25

\u27Upon the Decaying Kirk\u27: A Footnote to Ane Dialogue

Prints a short Scottish verse-fragment from the 1630s, Upon the Decaying Kirk, and discusses its relation to an earlier, longer workAne Dialogue (1619: see SSL 43:1) and to presbyterian protests in the Edinburgh High Kirk against the introduction of episcopalianism under King Charles I

No Lawyer for a Hundred Miles?: Mapping the New Geography of Access of Justice in Canada

Recent concerns about the geography of access to justice in Canada have focused on the dwindling number of lawyers in rural and remote areas, raising anxieties about the profession’s inability to meet current and future demands for localized legal services. These concerns have motivated a range of policy responses that aim to improve the education, training, recruitment and retention of practitioners in underserved areas. We surveyed lawyers across Ontario to better understand their physical proximity to clients and how, if at all, that proximity promotes access to justice. We find that lawyers’ scope of practice varies based on a number of factors, and in several areas of law lawyers serve clients beyond their immediate locality. Our results suggest that debates about the geography of access should be premised on the goal of territorial justice as an equitable distribution of legal services rather than a narrower emphasis on the equal distribution of lawyers

Ontario’s Administrative Tribunal Clusters: A Glass Half-Full or Half-Empty for Administrative Justice?

Claimants who come to administrative tribunals in Canada, as elsewhere, expecting a convenient forum to resolve their problems may discover that institutional resources and expertise, their own knowledge of the system, and their statutory entitlements and legal rights are fragmented between agencies with diverse norms and mandates. The provincial government of Ontario in Canada has recently enacted a novel strategy called tribunal clustering to confront these challenges. This paper explores the structure and rationales behind Ontario’s new tribunal clusters and compares these with reform models in Australia and the United Kingdom. The authors argue that tribunal clusters offer a flexible approach to institutional change that is responsive to the needs of users and can ultimately improve access and the quality of decision making. In their view, clusters represent a promising first step – but not a final destination – to achieve a more effective and coherent system of administrative justice

Ontario’s Administrative Tribunal Clusters: A Glass Half-Full or Half-Empty for Administrative Justice?

Claimants who come to administrative tribunals in Canada, as elsewhere, expecting a convenient forum to resolve their problems may discover that institutional resources and expertise, their own knowledge of the system, and their statutory entitlements and legal rights are fragmented between agencies with diverse norms and mandates. The provincial government of Ontario in Canada has recently enacted a novel strategy called tribunal clustering to confront these challenges. This paper explores the structure and rationales behind Ontario’s new tribunal clusters and compares these with reform models in Australia and the United Kingdom. The authors argue that tribunal clusters offer a flexible approach to institutional change that is responsive to the needs of users and can ultimately improve access and the quality of decision making. In their view, clusters represent a promising first step – but not a final destination – to achieve a more effective and coherent system of administrative justice