This article examines emerging forms of investment and land speculation and their implications for local food movements in urban areas. These investment involve  purchases of large tracts of land in growing urban areas with a view to profiting from re-zoning and exiting the market well before development occurs.   It uses  a case study of the struggle in Edmonton, Alberta over a city food and agriculture strategy and the protection  of prime food producing land in the northeast from urban development.  The article shows how local food activists were able to mobilize citizens in support of local food and preservation of the land and were able to initiate a process of linking land use decisions to a food and agriculture strategy. However, the power of development interests and the planning process resulted in a strategy which was weak on preserving land for food and the adoption of a land development plan which preserves little land  and threatens the future of existing food producers in the area.  The article argues that new forms of land grabbing in North America pose challenges to movements seeking to preserve local food production.

Researchers should cite this work as follows:

• Smythe, E. A., (2025), "Local food, farmland, and urban development: A case of land grabbing North American style", HSSCommons: (DOI: 10.15353/cfs-rcea.v2i1.29)

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1. agriculture' municipal land use
2. land grabbing
3. local food

Original publication: Smythe, Elizabeth Ann. "Local food, farmland, and urban development: A case of land grabbing North American style." Canadian Food Studies / La Revue canadienne des études sur l'alimentation, vol. 2, no. 1, 2015, pp. 48-74. DOI: 10.15353/cfs-rcea.v2i1.29. This material has been re-published in an unmodified form on the Canadian HSS Commons with the permission of Canadian Food Studies / La Revue canadienne des études sur l'alimentation. Copyright © the author(s). Work published in CFS/RCÉA prior to and including Vol. 8, No. 3 (2021) is licensed under the Creative Commons CC BY license. Work published in Vol. 8, No. 4 (2021) and after is licensed under the Creative Commons CC BY-SA license. For details, see creativecommons.org/licenses/.