Canadian farms consolidate, focus on crops
Canada’s agricultural landscape — once dominated by small farms and plentiful livestock — is now characterized by larger operations that focus on crop production, new census numbers suggested Thursday.
Data from Statistics Canada’s 2011 census of agriculture showed the country’s farmers are consolidating their operations and shifting their efforts away from the cattle farming that was once the backbone of Canadian farming.
While the average Canadian farm grew to a record size in 2011, the number of total farms reached a new low, shrinking 10.3 per cent since the last census release in 2006 and continuing a downward trend that first surfaced in 1941. The number of farm operators also dropped 10.1 per cent over the period.
Data suggest, however, that the decline in overall numbers doesn’t necessarily point to a downturn in total farming.
Although the number of farms slipped to 205,730 from 229.373 in the previous census, Statscan said many smaller farms have been consolidated into larger operations over that five-year stretch.
The total area of land being farmed slipped only four per cent to 160.2 million acres, while the average farm size jumped seven per cent to 778 acres.
Alfons Weersink, professor of agriculture at the University of Guelph, said digging deeper into the census data reveals a sector that’s in fairly robust health.
“The last several years have been good for most of agriculture,” Weersink said in a telephone interview.
“Profits have been up, prices have been increased quite significantly from the last census.
Weersink cites the growing number of commercial farms as evidence of the industry’s strength. While three-quarters of Canadian farms still earn gross receipts of less than $250,000, Statscan said the number of farms reporting more than $1 million in gross farm receipts soared 31.2 per cent from 2006 levels.
There was also a three per cent surge in the number of farms bringing in more than $500,000, which now make up 11.5 per cent of all farms in Canada.
Total gross farming receipts climbed four per cent to $51.1 billion, a fact Weersink partly attributes to high commodity and grain prices.
That same uptick partially accounts for the shift in farm production that has taken place over the past five years, he said.
Canada’s farming industry was traditionally sustained in equal measure by grain and beef production, according to the last census. Now, Statistics Canada said, grain and oilseed farms make up 30 per cent of the national total, up from 26.9 per cent, while beef farms tumbled from 26.3 per cent to 18.2 per cent.
Erik Dorff, an analyst at Statistics Canada, said the reason for the drop in Canada’s total farmland traces back to 2003, when the discovery of mad cow disease on a Canadian farm weakened prices and caused export markets to close. Ranchers chose to hold on to more of their cattle at the time of the earlier census in 2006 rather than sell at low prices, but improving values since then gave them an exit by 2011, he said.
“What we heard when we went out to the fields was it had been a difficult 10 years and prices had improved enough that folks who were going to get out, thought it was a good time to sell,” Dorff said.
The latest census data also shed light on the farmers themselves, painting a picture of a rapidly aging and heavily male-oriented population. Farmers over the age of 55 accounted for 48.3 per cent of the total population, marking the first time the older age group has led the field. Younger operators under 35 made up only 8.2 per cent of the population, about half the total registered 20 years ago. Women made up only 28 per cent of the farming population, Statistics Canada said.
The drop in the number of young farmers raised red flags in the House of Commons, where Liberals raised the issue. Federal Agriculture Minister Gerry Ritz was accused of hampering innovation in the industry by cutting funding to local agricultural councils. Ritz shrugged off the criticism. “We have fewer farmers doing a far better job and producing more product than we have ever seen,” he said. “Innovation and efficiency has taken over.”
Weersink said he believes the strength of the commercial farming sector and the growing interest in local food and organic growing techniques will help revitalize the farming population.
“It would be a sign of concern if the industry was struggling and if people were not interested in continuing,” he said.
“That’s not the situation.”