Ontario lags in farm income

Sunday, May 24, 2009

by BETTER FARMING STAFF

Despite huge leaps in their operating expenses last year, Ontario’s farmers took home a tidy profit, according to figures released today from Statistics Canada.

But with the country’s highest building depreciation expenses (the amount of money farmers must set aside to replace older buildings at current market prices) and third-highest machinery depreciation expenses for 2008, that extra cash may be needed for on-farm improvements.

And so far this year, farm cash receipts for Ontario farmers don’t appear to be as lucrative as they are elsewhere in Canada: while nationally, receipts were up 7.5 per cent in the first quarter of 2009 compared to the same time last year, Ontario’s dropped 1.1 per cent.

StatsCan attributes a 14.1 per cent increase in 2008 market receipts for Canadian farmers to strong prices for grains and oilseeds. The prices peaked in mid-2008 and have since fallen off. In the livestock sector there were increases in market receipts for cattle (2.4 per cent) and supply-managed commodities (5.7 per cent). Hog revenues dropped 2.9 per cent. In total, Canada’s farmers brought home $41.8 billion in market receipts.

Total net income for Ontario’s farmers jumped to $262 million in 2008 from -$220 million in 2007; federally, it jumped to $6.1 billion from $1 billion in the same time period.

Stephen Boyd, head of the agriculture division farm expenses unit at Statistics Canada, says Ontario had the highest operating expense level compared to other provinces in both 2007 and 2008 as well as the highest revenues. “This is because Ont. is the province with the largest number of farms,” he writes in an email. In 2006, Ontario had 57,211 farms; Alberta had the next highest number at 49,431. BF