Where would each ingredient come from?
By Diego Flammini
Staff Writer
Farms.com
Thanksgiving can act as a great reminder about the importance of farmers and agriculture to the country.
Every item on the table, from the turkey to the wine enjoyed with the meal, doesn’t happen without farmers and the overall agri-food sector.
Farms.com is using available data to identify where someone would go if he or she wanted to cross Canada looking for Thanksgiving dinner ingredients.
Ontario would supply the turkey.
Turkey farmers in Ontario produced 71 million kg of turkey in 2020, a Turkey Farmers of Canada factbook says.
That production resulted in a farm cash receipt value of $163. 4 million.
In 2020, Canadians consumed 143.8 million kg of turkey, or about 3.8 kg per person.
The ham would come from Manitoba.
Farmers in Manitoba produce about 35 per cent of all Canadian pork.
In 2020, 595 hog farms in the province produced 8.2 million pigs. And the average herd size is over 5,000.
One year prior, Manitoba’s hog sector contributed $1.7 billion to the provincial economy and helped support 14,000 jobs.
Any potatoes at a Canadian Thanksgiving dinner would come from Prince Edward Island.
In 2020, farmers in P.E.I. seeded 83,600 acres of potatoes and harvested 83,500 acres, or 99.9 per cent of the seeded area. And producers averaged a yield of 25,150 pounds of potatoes per acre.
A 2020 study looking at data from 2016 found the province’s potato sector generated about $1.35 billion in economic output, boosted the province’s GDP by more than $527 million and created 5,016 full-time jobs.
Cranberry sauce to accompany this meal would come from farmers in British Columbia.
The nearly 80 farmers who produce cranberries in B.C. are responsible for about 12 per cent of North American production.
Each grower produces about 750,000 barrels (100lbs per barrel) annually.
In 2018, B.C. farmers produced cranberries on 6,382 acres and generated about $40 million in cash receipts.
The side of carrots at a Canadian Thanksgiving would come from farmers in Ontario.
In 2018, Ontario growers planted more than 8,600 acres of carrots, which represented about 42 per cent of Canada’s carrot production.
This resulted in a total farm value of $43.8 million for Ontario growers.
Canada’s total farm value of carrots that year was $129.2 million.
Happy Thanksgiving from everyone at Farms.com!
And a special thank you to all Canadian producers who make Thanksgiving meals possible for families across the country.