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| JOE BRYKSA / WINNIPEG FREE PRESS archives Farmsare getting fewer and larger, while farmers are generally older |
By: Laura
Rance
The latest
census of agriculture contains few surprises. Farms are becoming fewer and
larger, farmers are getting older, fewer farmers are raising livestock, and
canola has continued its meteoric growth to surpass wheat as the most dominant
crop.
But at the same
time, these ongoing trends raise some niggling questions about the
sustainability of this industry's path in the context of big-picture issues,
such as global population growth, rising energy prices and climate change.
Despite the
continued consolidation of land holdings into fewer and larger operators, a
trend that has been in play since the 1920s, and despite the relative good
times the sector is currently enjoying, farming has not yet found its fountain
of youth.
The average age
of Canadian farmers continues to grow at a vastly disproportionate rate to the
general working population. The 2011 Census of Agriculture marks the first time
the 55-and-over age category represented the highest percentage of total
operators.
In 2011, 48.3
per cent of operators were aged 55 or over, compared to 40.7 per cent in 2006.
"By contrast, the Labour Force Survey reported that in May 2011, 15.4 per
cent of those self-employed in the total labour force were aged 55 years or
older," Statistics Canada says.
Fewer than 10
per cent of farmers in Canada are under the age of 35 and that proportion is
declining. In short, there are a lot more people on the way out than there are
coming in.
Will the scale
of farming in Canada increase to the point where the few young farmers who do
take up the call will be able to take on the massive operations acquired by
their retiring seniors?
This latest
census showed significant declines in livestock numbers and the acreages
devoted to producing livestock feeds.
The number of
beef cattle reported for breeding purposes decreased by 22.3 per cent since
2006, totalling 4.5 million head in 2011. The number of farms reporting
breeding stock decreased by 25.3 per cent to 63,515 farms. Pigs on farms are
down almost 16 per cent and the number of farms raising them has declined by
nearly 36 per cent.
There are good
economic reasons behind these declines. Cattle prices have partly recovered
from the BSE-related collapse of 2003. As soon as some of the senior farmers
saw an opportunity to recoup some of their lost equity, they took it. The hog
industry is still digging its way out of a market collapse in 2008-09, which
saw government dollars used to downsize and restructure the industry.
Both of these
sectors pinned their export hopes first on the United States and now on
emerging economies, namely China. The thinking was, its rapidly growing
economic wealth would create a demand for meat protein. And because of its
population density, and relatively scant feed resources, it would import the
meat rather than grow it.
So far, China
seems predisposed to buying feed to build its own livestock sector. So instead
of being a customer for meat, it has become a competitor for feed grains. But
how long will that last, given what we know about zoonotic disease in areas
densely populated by humans and livestock?
What the numbers
don't articulate is livestock plays an important nutrient-recycling function in
agriculture. As livestock disappears from the equation, more of the nutrients
used by annual crops, which are exported with the crop, must be bought back in
the form of commercial fertilizer -- the cost of which is directly related to
energy prices. They seem to rise more than they fall.
And what about
the land? With the decline of livestock, the area of land in Canada devoted to
forage crops is falling as those areas are converted into the more profitable
annual cash crops.
The problem is,
many of those lands are marginal for crop production and highly vulnerable to
erosion. As for canola versus wheat, it has been well-documented that farmers,
tempted by high prices, are courting an agronomic wreck by squeezing their
canola rotations. How long can that continue?
On a more
positive note, for the first time with this census, no-till practices, which
are less ecologically disruptive, accounted for more than half of all area
prepared for seeding across the country, a shift that was caused by a 23.8 per
cent increase in the area of land seeded using no-till practices. Overall, 17.1
per cent more farms reported using no-till practices than in 2006.
That's
significant progress. But is having half the land protected enough?
The census is
simply a snapshot in time. But this one raises more questions about the state
of the industry than it answers.
Laura Rance is
editor of the Manitoba Co-operator. She can be reached at 792-4382 or by email:
laura@fbcpublishing.com
Republished from
the Winnipeg Free Press print edition May 12, 2012 B6
Original Article Here
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