It is like a snapshot of a happy, smiling family taken just before disaster descends and their world changes.
A federal government report on the financial state of agriculture compares 2001 to 1999 and finds mainly good news.
“All types of farms reported increased net worth,” said the Statistics Canada report titled Farm Financial Survey 2002 that was published at the end of 2003.
“The average net worth of farms across the country increased 15 percent between 1999 and 2001.”
Average asset values increased, as did average net farm income.
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Typically, not all farmers in those years would have felt the breeze of prosperity identified in the averages, but the federal agency was reporting an industry with significant strength.
The prairie beef industry provided an example.
Between 1997 and 2001, the average asset value on Alberta beef farms increased 32 percent to more than $1 million. In Manitoba and Saskatchewan, the increase was less dramatic but still solid.
Just around the corner was May 20, 2003, and the discovery of bovine spongiform encephalopathy. When Statistics Canada compiles its next two-year comparison, 2003 versus 2001, billions of dollars in livestock sector value will have disappeared.
The survey indicated that two years ago, hog farming was the most lucrative sector of the industry, with average net farm income across the country totalling more than $111,000. In Alberta, the farm average was $157,000 in net farm income.
Potato farmers were the second highest earners, with an average net cash farm income of more than $93,000.
Grains and oilseeds, at an average $32,000 in net cash farm income, and beef farms at less than $24,000, were near the bottom.
Farmers in Prince Edward Island could boast the highest average net worth in Canada in 2001 – $1.33 million – and along with second-place British Columbia and third-place Ontario, they could thank escalating supply management quotas for part of their growing wealth.
Average Saskatchewan farm values, dominated by lower priced grain land, few farms with quota and little urban or commercial pressure pushing up land values, were barely half the P.E.I. average. At $774,325, the Saskatchewan farm value was among the lowest in Canada.
Statistics Canada said soaring quota values gave farms in the supply managed sector among the greatest asset value increases in Canada. Poultry farm values soared 30 percent to an average $2.2 million in just two years.
Bigger farms saw assets grow the fastest in the two years to the end of 2001.
“Generally, average net worth increases with farm size,” said the federal analysis.
“The largest sales class, farms with $500,000 or more in gross farm income, reported a strong increase in average total assets, up eight percent to $3,523,649.”
The next level of farm size, with revenue of between a quarter and half a million dollars, saw average asset values increase five percent to $1.7 million.
