By Ralph Martin

In Indigenous communities, the ongoing tenure of land was relational and inter-dependent over generations, bioregions and species. In nation states, specific areas of land, often rectangles, are parcels owned by an individual, family, corporation or government. 
With hubris, an aging King Lear asked his three daughters to expound on their love for him and his kingdom, before assigning land parcels to them. Cordelia understood that real love is not for exchange. “I cannot heave my heart into my mouth. I love your majesty according to my bond, no more, no less.” Enraged, Lear disowned her. 
His elder two daughters gleefully exaggerated their “love” and were each rewarded with one half of the kingdom. 
Lear expected to bask in the glory of the kingdom he had inherited and strengthened. His daughters accepted that he could live in their castles, as he chose, with 100 knights of his own. However, relationships deteriorated, they reneged and released his knights, saying he didn’t really need them. The succession plan collapsed.  
In the 2023 Stratford production, Paul Gross, as the distraught King Lear, humiliated by his precipitous collapse in living standards, roared, “O reason not the need!” I heard the echo all the way home. He had assumed an indefinite royal living from the surplus of the land. Similarly, my two and a half-year-old grandson will declare, “I need a muffin,” completely merging needs and wants.  
Lear was later purified in a storm surge of thunder, lightning and rain. As the kingdom disintegrated, Lear, reunited with Cordelia, said “I’ll kneel down and ask of thee forgiveness.”
Over my years of teaching, I’ve asked my students which generation they represent on their home farm. Some were third and fourth-generation farmers, fewer in the Maritimes were seventh and eighth generations, one in Prince Edward county, Ontario, was the ninth and an outlier from Austria was sixteenth and admitted, with a sigh, that he might stop farming. Imagine his conversations with generations 15 and 14. 
Farm succession is partially motivated by a love of family and land in both generations. Despite tensions between generations and varying expectations, succession works well in some cases. 
Today, many farms are aggregated parcels of land with equipment, infrastructure, livestock and perhaps quota, often incorporated, even if family run, and may not include the original family homestead. 
Land prices are increasing with pressure from investors (Bill Gates, certainly not a farmer, owns more farmland than anyone else in the U.S.) and from supply management farmers in Canada who buy extra land because they cannot purchase more quota. Land prices based on questionable assumptions about ongoing increases are now excluding dedicated food producers and rewarding speculators. Rented land may provide profits in some years, but it limits long-term planning.
Retiring farmers want to protect their hard-earned legacy and ensure a comfortable retirement (even if without 100 knights), after accounting for capital gains taxes. They may resist no longer having the last word. 
Young farmers want some scope to earn a living as they envision it. They require enough financial heft to face future challenges of increasing weather variability, rising costs and land prices and the precarity of markets and supply chains. However, some may accept succession as an obligation and stoop under heavy debt burdens or feel constrained with poorly defined or shifting roles in a family corporation.