by KAREN BRIGGS
Fuelled by skyrocketing commodity prices, increasing export opportunities, and a scarcity of tillable acreage on the market, prices for Ontario farmland have reached “unprecedented levels", states a report released Tuesday by RE/MAX Ontario-Atlantic Canada.
“This is the first time in memory when we have had more potential buyers (of farmland) than listings,” says Dale Petrie, a Chatham/Kent sales representative with the company. Petrie was the driving force behind the release of this inaugural Farm Edition trends report. “We have been blessed here in Ontario,” he says. “Prices for corn and soybeans have doubled in recent years, and global demand for grain has driven up real estate prices.
The RE/MAX Market Trends Report – Farm Edition 2011, notes that of the 12 major agricultural communities examined in Ontario, 92 per cent reported a shortage of quality farmland for sale, while 75 per cent reported an increase in price per acre – up to $20,000 an acre in the Holland Marsh/Bradford area, for example.
The report also highlighted the continuation of a trend towards fewer, but larger, farming operations province-wide. On a national scale, the average farm has tripled in size over the last 50 years, as farmers accumulate more acreage, either by purchasing or leasing, and diversify (including hosting solar or wind power projects, or facilitating the extraction of below-ground resources like natural gas).
Petrie notes that investors form a small part of the buying group in the province, “but I would say 95 per cent of our land purchases are farmers looking to add to their acreage.” BF
Comments
There will be a time when the bottom of farming falls out then will they ask for debt forgivnes.
It doesnt make much sense to pay $12000 per acre and cry to government for subsidies and risk Management programs
how can an acre pay for itself and how can young farmers get started at these prices for land. Baby bommers have got greedy and hogs.
My sentiments exactly to the last person to comment. I saw an advertisement for 180 acres for $1 million dollars and the farmer was foolish enough to put their net income from the farming ($1000) in the ad. There is something wrong here went it would take 1000 years just to pay for the land, and that's not even factoring in interest. It only makes sense if farmers are speculating for their land to be developed into some strip mall.
The average age of the farming workforce is 52 now. What happens fifteen years down the line when it starts retiring? You're all going to want to sell pretty much at once, aren't you? What youth are going to be in the position to buy and run a farm when the wages paid are $11 at best for the greenhouse workers in the county and service jobs in the cities? Anyone thinking ahead of the curve and wants to hire a farm hand now to train into taking over the farm?
Stephen St. John
Change the names, and nothing is any different from either 1974, or 1979 - we farmers were fools then, and we, and/or our children, are fools now.
The "peasant dream" of owning land, at any cost, and at any price/earnings multiple, condemns primary agriculture to always being a good business to leave.
Stephen Thompson, Clinton ON
It is good to see others see the mistakes of farmers and how us farmer fools have allowed our leaders of? and?( cant name organizations or bf will have a fit) pussyfoot up to powers to be
Will they extend the sept 15th 2011 dead line for grain farmers RMP?
Nobody in grains is going to get a payment for 2011, so nobody really cares - however, I, like everyone else in the farm management community, am going to be working 24/7 to make sure everybody with livestock and hogs gets registered because they are more than likely to get an RMP payment for 2011.
BTW, I hear rumours that the AgriStability clawback privision might be eliminated in 2012 - big deal because nobody in their right mind will enrol in the 2012 RMP program even if it is.
Stephen Thompson, Clinton ON
The vast majority of farms are not trading hands right now, a very small percentage of farms are being acquired by a small percentage of buyers. Although it fits with Mr Thompson's rather tiresome tautology about the ignorance of his colleagues, most farmers are not fools.
One would think that given his penchant for believing he always has the right answers, that rather than leaving the business Mr Thompson ought to be well able to stick around and separate the rest of us fools from our fortunes.
We've heard it all before - those who, in 1979, claimed farmers weren't fools, were crying the loudest by 1983, for debt forgiveness programs.
Personally, I got tired of representing "fools" at Farm Debt Review proceedings - so, I think I've earned the right to decide who is, or is not, a land-buying fool.
Stephen Thompson, Clinton ON
AMEN
Even now, well-over three years later, it continues to amaze me that somebody who knows the meaning and spelling of the words "tautology" and "penchant" still can't remember his/her own name!
Stephen Thompson, Clinton ON
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