Finding farm labour is becoming a big problem.
Larger farmers are more worried about farm income support program cuts than smaller farmers.
Young farmers are bullish about their future in farming.
Those are some of the findings of a survey into prairie farmer attitudes conducted this spring.
PRA Research Associates surveyed 962 prairie farmers and found attitudes that highlight problems that are beginning to haunt the West.
“There appears to be a growing issue with regards to farm labour and securing farm labour,” said PRA managing partner Greg Mason.
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Thirty-two percent of farmers reported being worried about farm labour. In particular, 39 percent of farmers who produce more than $500,000 in revenue expressed a concern.
That made labour the third highest anxiety farmers reported, following weather and high input prices.
Farmers also said they expect to be as profitable this year as last year, with 25 percent expecting to be more profitable and 25 percent expecting to be less profitable. Forty-seven percent expect to be as profitable as they were in 2012-13.
However, younger farmers are more optimistic about 2013-14 profitability. While only 28 percent of farmers older than 55 expect their profits to increase this year, 62 percent of young farmers expect to make more money.
At the same time, 61 percent of farmers expect their input costs to increase and only seven percent expect inputs to become cheaper.
Only 19 percent of farmers expect their debt levels to increase, with more than half expecting it to stay the same. Young farmers are twice as likely to increase their debt this year as older farmers, with 33 percent expecting to see their debt load increase and 15 percent expect it to decrease.
Farmers appear to be planning to ease off on the massive investments in farmland that have been common in recent years. Only 20 percent intend to increase capital spending, the survey says, while 33 percent intend to reduce it.
Mason said he thinks part of the reason that young farmers expect to increase their debt load and future profitability more than older farmers is that they are expanding their farms while older farmers are shrinking theirs.
However, he thinks younger farmers are also turning contemporary farms into more capital-intensive enterprises, more like other industrial businesses.
“I think that what a lot of farmers are finding is that their land asset base is growing in value,” said Mason.
“That’s giving them more capacity to leverage. I’m suspecting in the next five to 10 years even faster consolidation of farming and a lot of farms will become very significant business operations with high levels of operating credit and debt and all the normal ways of going about with business.”
