Statistics Canada has released a new report that suggests the number of Canadian farms has declined while those that remain are forced to expand their operations to survive.
The new report entitled "Snapshot of Canadian Agriculture, The Financial Picture of Farms in Canada and Farming in Canada's CMAs" used data collected from the 2006 Census on Agriculture.
The report stated between 2001 and 2006 the number of census farms in Canada declined 7.1 per cent and the number of farm operators declined 5.5 per cent.
Since 1941, Canadian farms have declined steadily in Canada while the size of farms in the country has increased.
In 1996, the average farm was 608 acres and grew to 676 acres in 2001. According to 2006 data, the average farm is now nearly another eight per cent larger at 728 acres.
"If you ain't getting bigger, you ain't gonna make it," Alberta farmer Jim Brown told the Canadian Press.
Brown's farm has grown exceedingly from his original 140 acres plot he got from his father in 1947. Between wheat, barley, canola and hay, Brown and his son Neil now cultivate about 4,200 acres.
"It just kinda grew," Brown, 77, said. "The old guys, they'd look around and say somebody's gotta be crazy."
But Brown maintains it's not lunacy, it's survival that spurs the growth in size.
Statistics Canada found the decline of farms, along with the simultaneous growth of the remaining operations, was consistent throughout the agricultural industry.
Canada has 20 per cent fewer cattle farms than it did in 2001, although the average number of cattle and calves is up 13 per cent on farms.
The number of pig farmers has dropped by more than a quarter while the size of the average operation has grown 45 per cent, from 902 pigs to 1,308.
Brown says he doesn't expect the days of the small farm to ever return.
"Forty years ago it started getting bigger and doing this, and it's never quit," he said.
"My boy Neil, he'd buy more land right now."
Adapting to change
With increasing production costs and decreasing commodity prices, successful farming requires a niche market or a large operation with significant investments to remain profitable.
Aging farm operators are choosing to retire or move to less physically demanding operations and fewer members of the younger generation are taking up the responsibility of the family farm. The average farmer is now 52 years old.
As a result, Canadian farmers are forced to become more efficient, adaptable and have even started to look for work off the farm to supplement their income.
Larger farms are a big part of that increasing efficiency, Bruce Sommerville, the agricultural fieldman for the County of Kneehill, near Brown's farm, told the Canadian Press.
"The price of wheat hasn't changed a whole lot compared to the input costs," he said.
"You're not really making any more money per acre, so you have to farm more acres."
A farmer would have to make three times as much money per acre to reap the same level of profit that a farmer did 30 years ago, Sommerville explained.
Profits are not rising, so farms have to get bigger or farmers have to find outside work just to survive.
Nearly half of all farmers -- 48 per cent -- reported at least some income from outside employment in 2005, up from 45 per cent in 2000.
"Urban consumers may think that, because the same amount of land is being cultivated, Canada's agriculture sector is doing fine. But losing 20,000 people in just five years will have a huge impact on Canada's rural economy and rural community infrastructure," Bob Friesen, president of the Canadian Federation of Agriculture, said in a statement.
Ellery Smith grew up watching his father farm their land and eventually went into the business himself, but working the land couldn't provide enough income for his family.
"A minimum of 2,000 acres per family is what I've heard is needed to make it justifiable, with equipment upkeep and trying to stay with the times. We're a little shy," Smith told the Canadian Press.
Smith, 29, and his brothers took to Alberta's oil industry in an effort to build a different kind of business off of the land.
British Columbia showed 55 per cent of farmers working outside jobs, the highest number in Canada.
But the biggest increases since the last census in 2001 came in Alberta and Saskatchewan, where five per cent more farmers rely to some extent on off-farm paycheques.
The 2006 agricultural census counted 229,373 census farms as of May 16, 2006 with 327,060 farm operators, which represented an equivalent of 19,140 people.
With files from the Canadian Press
