Census says agriculture industry faces serious erosion issues

BY BRENT FOX

The Advertiser

NovaNewsNow.com

The numbers don’t tell the whole story. Though he hasn’t gone over the recently released Statistics Canada agriculture census 2006 in detail, Kings County Federation of Agriculture president Paul D’Entremont says “you have to love it” in order to continue farming.

Nova Scotia had 3,795 farms census day May 16, 2006, a decline of 3.3 per cent over the previous five years.

However, the decrease is lower than the 7.1 per cent experienced across the country.

In Kings County, we had 604 farms with 835 operators and a total of 120,105 acres last year, compared to 644 farms and 860 operators and 129,938 acres five years previous.

There were 658 fewer farms in the province than 10 years ago.

D’Entremont told The Advertiser, “it’s still bad. We’re losing farms steadily,” and the reasons for this include a bit of everything, he said.

“The prices of everything we have to pay for are increasing and we’re not getting our return,” he said. This includes costs of fuel, feed and fertilizer. Feed availability is vying with bio-fuel use. As well, farmers are responsible for more and more food security costs.

A beef producer, D’Entremont said that things have improved somewhat since the BSE situation, but not nearly as much as needed. Before BSE the price was $1.15 to $1.25 a live pound; now it might get up to $1.05 a pound.

He lauded the WI “buy local” campaign and pointed out that the loss of a processing job or a farm is a loss to the economy and the community. “It has a snowball effect.”



Still some potential

Meanwhile, Nova Scotia Federation of Agriculture policy analyst Bradley McCallum told The Advertiser, “I think there’s definitely some growth potential in Kings County.” He pointed out that statistics show there has been a steady increase in farm receipts over the past three censuses.

However, he acknowledged that the statistics don’t reflect recent developments by commodity, including pork or poultry.

In a May 18 release on his overview on the census, McCallum noted, “Kings County continues to be the centre of agriculture in the province, accounting for more than 35 per cent of the production, now at $171,657,350.”

McCallum also noted an overall increase in field crops in the province, including grain and oilseed. Though some of the latter two may be headed for feed, most, he suspects, is for ethanol and bio-fuels.

As for beef, McCallum said, “there has been a rebound in the number of beef herds in the province, though not necessarily in herd size.” There has been a 20 per cent increase in the number of herds, though these likely include hobby farm herds raising beef for their own consumption.

The province hosted 1.7 per cent of the country’s 229,373 farms last year, a number comparable to the 2001 statistics.

Despite the overall decrease in farms in five years, the province as a whole showed a slight increase in farm operators at 5,100.

Farm size increased

Average farm size in the province increased from 2006 to 262 acres, up from 256 acres. But the total farmland declined one per cent in the five years to 2006 to 995,943 acres, which accounts for less than one per cent of the total farm area in the country.

The province’s agriculture industry’s gross farm receipts were $509.5 million in 2005, with operating expenses rising to $442.5 million.

About 5.3 per cent of farm income came from government-funded program payments in 2005, up from 2.6 per cent in 2000.

As well, farmers spent an average of 87 cents in expenses for every dollar realized in 2005, some three cents more than in 2001.

Nova Scotia farms producing organic crops numbered 359 in 2006, about 9.5 per cent of all operations, compared to 6.8 per cent nationwide.

In 2005, 40.5 per cent of Nova Scotia farmers worked more than 40 hours a week on their farms, a minimal change in five years. Canada-wide, however, 46.7 per cent of farmers did so.

Agricultural highlights show that the province still has the country’s largest Christmas tree acreage with 22,570 acres, 29.8 per cent of the national total; grape crop land increased 73.8 per cent to 466 acres by 2006; blueberry acreage totaled 38,634 acres, up three per cent, with the province comprising 30.5 per cent of the country’s blueberry area; poultry production was 41 million kilograms and turkey 4.5 million kg in 2005; the province is first in mink farming, up 89 per cent to 949,000 animals, with 49.8 per cent of the county’s total.

On the other hand, hogs dropped 23.9 per cent to 95,131 animals last year from 124,935 in 2001.