Farming in Canada

The story of farming in Canada mirrors our history—a tale of hardy and adventurous people pushing their way into the interior of the country and reaping the abundance of the land. A generous immigration policy in the early decades of the 20th century and familiar geography attracted many foreigners to Canada's farms, on land grants or as hired labour. After all, any Ukrainian could find familiar terrain in Canada's vast western wheatlands, and any Italian, Dane or German could recall European landscapes while tilling the fields of southern Ontario.

	Field, St. Jacobs near Waterloo, Ont. Photo: C.A. Clarke

Contemporary Canadian farmers have shared the expansionist spirit of our early settlers. The amount of Canada's cultivated land expanded 392% during the 20th century. By 2001, Canadians farmed 67.5 million hectares of land. Though this area amounts to only 7% of Canada's land mass, it is still three times the size of Great Britain. These farms dot two main regions of the country: an arc that sweeps across the grasslands of Alberta, Saskatchewan and Manitoba, and a band of forested lowland, nowhere more than 320 kilometres wide, that stretches from the Maritimes, along the St. Lawrence River and into southern Ontario.

Each of Canada's many agricultural regions suits a particular range of crops or livestock. Greenhouse fruit and vegetables are common in British Columbia. Alberta beef is famous worldwide for its high quality, and wheat and canola reign in Saskatchewan. Ontario and Quebec, generally wetter than the Prairies, have mixed farms and remain the centre of Canada's dairy industry. Farther east, Prince Edward Island has long been the heart of potato farming.

The size of the typical Canadian farm has increased dramatically over the last 100 years. In 1901, the number of census farms dotting the landscape totalled 511,100, peaking at 732,800 some 40 years later. As machines made it possible to do more work with fewer people, census farms decreased in number. By 2001, there were 246,923 census farms, down almost 11% since 1996.

The 1990s were a decade of difficult times for Canadian agriculture. Prairie farmers lost their annual grain transportation subsidies, farms struggled under heavy debt loads, and many Canadian farmers suffered during periods of low commodity prices in foreign markets. Moreover, to keep pace with the growth in mechanized farming, farmers have had to divert more of their money into operating expenses such as purchases of machinery and fertilizers. As a result, the average farmer’s take home pay, as a portion of total farm cash income, dwindled from 26% in 1971 to 8% in 2002.