Canadian farm incomes continued their upward trend last year, according to figures from Statistics Canada.
Total farm cash receipts, including income from crops, livestock and direct payment programs, reached a record $57.5 billion, up nearly $2.5 billion from the previous year.
However, the income gains were primarily the result of higher prices for cattle and livestock and not from the sale of crops.
Cash receipts from the sale of livestock and livestock products rose more than $4 billion in 2014 to $25.6 billion.
By contrast, cash receipts from the sale of agricultural crops declined by nearly $1 billion, falling to $29.7 billion from $30.6 billion.
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Statistics Canada’s numbers show that prairie farmers saw the largest gains.
Alberta farm incomes were up 9.1 percent to 12.9 billion, Saskatchewan farm incomes rose eight percent to $13.1 billion and Manitoba’s total farm cash receipts were listed at $5.9 billion, up from 2.7 percent from 2013.
J.P. Gervais, chief agricultural economist with Farm Credit Canada, said the overall revenue picture in the Canadian agriculture sector looks good despite a slight reduction in crop income.
“We’ll have to wait and see what crops are like and so on, but 2015 to me would be a fairly decent year,” he said. “I don’t think we should expect the record year that we had in 2014 to repeat, but 2015 is shaping up to be pretty decent.”
Gervais said there are signals that Canadian farmers, particularly in the West, are starting to spend more carefully.
The country’s producers added nearly $6 billion worth of debt last year, pushing overall farm debt to $84 billion.
However, signals from the farm retail, farm equipment and farmland real estate markets suggest that producers are budgeting more carefully when it comes to farm input purchases and major capital investments.
Revenue figures from the first quarter of 2015 appear to support Gervais’ view that 2015 will be a solid year for farm cash receipts, though perhaps not a record one.
Cash receipts in the first quarter of 2015 totalled $14.8 billion, up 4.5 percent over the first quarter of 2014.
