The decline of the family farm is certainly not news around here. The idea of Canada being fed by an army of independent farmers acting for the greater good of their local communities has largely become myth.
Farmers may still be independent business people, but they are not small landholders, rising to milk cows and feed the chickens, before getting on the tractor to put in the crops.
One more view we know to be disappearing from the rural landscape is the sight of young farmers taking over and expanding family holdings over generations. Farming just doesn’t work that way, anymore.
In the last census in 2006, the average farm size in Canada was 728 acres. That was up from 676 acres in the census before.
The trend probably will show an acceleration in the current census, due to a phenomenon well-known in other countries, but brand new here: corporate farm ownership.
In a country built on generations-old family farms, Canada’s largest farmer is a newcomer. It’s called One Earth Farm Corporation, a division of Sprott Resources Group.
Their website reports they farm 2.1 million acres. A lot of the land is leased from 17 different First Nations, but they also own a lot of land outright. One Earth recently posted quarterly revenues of $2.8 million. After expenses, they reported a net quarterly profit of just $10,000. That’s a lot of money to invest for not much profit, but our own rural neighbours in Central Alberta (and their bankers) would not likely see that as out of the ordinary.
But nor is it reason for despair in a country that struggles for sustainability in food production.
Check out online job sites and you’ll see ads from One Earth, calling for farm machine mechanics, foremen/forewomen, shop managers and even computer analysts.
There are a lot of good jobs inside the expense ledgers of One Earth quarterly reports.
And neither should corporate farming be the enemy of our notion of the family farm. How many trained young farmers emerge from learning institutions like Olds College yearly, with little hope of ever owning their own farm — or if they do own it, paying for it in their lifetimes?
Another Canadian corporation, Bonnefield Financial Inc., is looking for young skilled farmers swimming in debt, sitting on mortgaged land, while leasing other land, trying to make their operation large enough to pay.
Bonnefield is also a new player but has a current portfolio of 7,000 acres either owned or leased, which they lease back on a long-term basis to farmers. The farmer gets long-term access to land debt-free; Bonnefield and its individual investors get an appreciating asset.
In Saskatchewan and Manitoba, a foreigner cannot own farmland, without farming it himself. So Bonnefield and its investors must all be Canadian.
Freedom to decide who grows what crops on what plots is compromised on a corporate farm. But a corporate landowner will keep an eye to maintaining its assets, if it does not want to eventually lose them.
Who better to do that, than a farm family?
Greg Neiman is an Advocate editor.