Abstract

On Epekwitk or Prince Edward Island, corporations have been appropriating and vertically integrating the agriculture industry for decades. As the island suffers the consequences of this takeover, organic farmers have been at the forefront of the fight for alternative food systems that place sustainability and communal well-being over profit. In this thesis, I examine the relationship between organic farmers and the corporate control of agriculture on Epekwitk. I provide an in-depth historical overview of the conditions of land tenure and agriculture that allowed for the takeover of large companies, and I detail the nuances, contradictions and surprises that arise as organic farmers both lose ground to hegemonic power and continue to assert their unyielding vision of sustainable, ethical, and farmer-led agricultural futures.
Drawing on 6 months of work on a diverse range of organic farms, as well as 9 in-depth interviews, I examine the discourses and practices employed by organic farmers in their efforts to navigate a monopolised agriculture industry. As organic farmers have become inundated with structures and logics hostile to their core politics, morals, and ethics, staying in business has necessitated significant concessions to the agribusiness-oriented system in which they are forced to operate. At the same time, organic farmers continue to push back against, adapt to, and resist corporate domination. Farmers turn to the agrarian roots of organic farming, they look to their agricultural ancestors who fought absentee landlords for freehold land tenure, and they lean on the cherished multispecies relationships that their practices facilitate.