Traditional views and descriptions of the farm sector become less relevant as farms grow in size and production becomes more concentrated on larger operations, says a new think-tank report.
Government programming should be designed to recognize the new reality of fewer and bigger farms rather than a “one size fits all” model that aims to serve all classes of farmers, it added.
Government definitions of a farm and popular conceptions of the “family farm” are part of the problem, according to researchers Larry Martin and Al Mussell of the George Morris Centre in Guelph, Ont.
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Their report is an analysis of the trends shown in the 2011 federal census of agriculture.
They argue that a key culprit in misconceptions is the Statistics Canada census calculation of the number of Canadian farms, often used by policy makers and farm advocates. It indicates there are more than 200,000 farms in Canada.
In the 2011 census, 54 percent of those farms recorded gross revenues of less than $100,000.
Martin and Mussell argue that the agricultural census farm definition is outdated, counting tens of thousands of smaller farms that are not commercially viable as stand-alone operations. A farmer hoping to make a living must have revenue of at least $250,000 and more likely $500,000 or more, they say.
The report argues that the industry is changing faster than the debate.
“With the changes in farm size and structure that are occurring in agriculture, the census definition of farm operator is likely becoming quite meaningless,” said the George Morris report.
“For all intents and purposes, commercial farms — those with enough sales to generate an independent living income — have sales greater than $250,000. Hence the vast majority of ‘census farms’ are not commercial operations.”
The report also said that the “romantic concept about family farms” is out of step with reality. The current farm structure is still deeply family oriented even as farms get bigger and many farms incorporate.
“The point is that farms with $1 million in sales are not huge corporate entities,” Martin and Mussell argued.
“The vast majority of Canadian farms in all sales categories are owned and managed by families, including in some cases more than one generation.”
They challenge the common argument that corporate farming is becoming the norm.
“We are not seeing the demise of the family farm or the rise of ‘corporate’ or ‘factory’ farms,” says the report. “Rather, today’s farming technology allows for larger operations, many of which are structured as corporations for tax and succession reasons.”
Martin and Mussell also argue that the changing structure of agriculture should change the way policy makers and analysts view the power structure in the industry.
Traditionally, farmers were de-picted as the weak link as hundreds of thousands of individual producers negotiated with increasingly concentrated buyers and input sellers.
“Surely the growing concentration of farms at least suggests that farmers would not be the victims of market power as might once have been the case, especially as the border become more open and communication becomes easier,” they said.
“Canadian farmers can more easily bargain with Canadian customers by having the alternative to sell elsewhere.”
