The end of the family farm
Small-time farming is a gamble few can afford: U of S prof
Tessa Vanderhart Staff
The demise of the family farm is on the horizon, according to Hartley Furtan.
The University of Saskatchewan agricultural economics professor, says that small farms are no longer financially feasible -- but while this may hurt the economics of rural communities and farm families, it will not affect the economic landscape of the prairies.
With each successive year of losses, there are fewer family farms, Furtan explained, as farmers continue to lose money and leave the farm behind.
“You’re going to see people leave,” he said. “Land values will fall.”
Even if the last family farm were to turn in this year, there would be little to no effect on the economy of the prairies, Furtan said: small farms, even agriculture as an industry, has been dying out over the last 50 years.
He flatly explained the reason for such drastic changes to the economic landscape: most farmers are unable to break even. Without supplemental income, most farmers would not survive — and Furtan said that he cannot predict that any crop grown in the prairies will be a break-even crop this growing season.
As there are fewer farm families, more and more land will lie fallow, particularly the lower-quality land.
“In the short-term, it’s just not economically viable,” Furtan said. “The farmers aren’t able to come near covering their costs, let alone make any profit for labour.”
He added that there are long-term concerns as well: family farmers use high-energy farming methods, and farming requires a considerable amount of capital, with which most farmers cannot keep up.
This may reflect the fact that some of the land should not have been farmed in the first place, said Furtan. He added that the loss of this productivity will not affect consumers. In fact, he said, most people are completely unaware of the financial crisis facing Canadian farmers, as the losses incurred are seldom reflected in market prices or even scarcity. Rather, less is exported.
Still, as the landscape of rural Saskatchewan and Manitoba continues to empty, and only the more profitable areas are farmed, the region will lose something.
“Our culture is tied to it; there’s the politics, art, history, the drama of rural Canada, of which agriculture plays a vital role, and that has value, in and of itself.”
More importantly, family farms are highly efficient, producing high-quality food at a low cost.
Furtan explained that the industry has evolved with these people in mind, and now that the family farm is being eliminated, the industry could stand to lose greatly, as this year — though unusual — will be a poor one. Eventually, however, the family farm will grow again, Furtan said.
He added that the possible and much-discussed dissolution of the Canadian Wheat Board does not offer a solution to the crisis of the independent farmer.
“The Wheat Board hasn’t been a solution to the problem, but dissolving it won’t [be], either.”
In 2002, the U.S. began subsidizing corn producers. The resulting price fall hurt Canadian farmers, Furtan said, and even now only Alberta and Quebec have implemented minimum prices to counter the price fall. Corn-growers have begun to push for an anti-dumping bill that would address this problem nationally, but it has yet to come to fruition.
As for the short-term, Furtan is pessimistic.
“The returns that farmers are getting are just too low. The returns are negative,” he said.
“And I think that sort of tells the story in itself.”
