High Alberta farmland prices dissuading new farmers

Jun 16, 2022

Report from Parkland Institute suggests that real estate investors are at fault preventing new farmers entering Alberta industry.

By Andrew Joseph, Farms.com

Parkland Institute, based in the University of Alberta has released a 54-page report entitled Finance in the Fields: Investors, Lenders, Farmers, and the Future of Farmland in Alberta.

The report infers that that farmland investors are the ones increasing land prices making it difficult for new farmers to enter the industry.

Parkland Institute is an Alberta research network that examines public policy issues.

Lead researcher and report writer Katherine Aske said in an accompanying press release that, “The roots of the current shift go back to the 2008 financial collapse, when investors searching for more stable places to store their wealth began buying farmland in droves everywhere—including, as the report shows, in Alberta.”

With data gathered from Statistics Canada, Aske said that with farmland prices rising, it has extended beyond the actual value of the farmland.

Alberta farmland, she noted, is now double the cost of similar acreage in Saskatchewan, and with the rise in farmland pricing, Alberta has seen an increase in the number of farmers working rented property.

She explained: “Tenant farming, in turn, leaves farmers in precarious economic positions and disconnects them from the long-term health of the land. Renting restricts farmers from implementing regenerative practices such as seeding green manures or transitioning to organic agriculture.”

Of course, ag rental prices are also on the rise.

Just as in the larger Canadian cities experiencing highs in urban and suburban housing where young families can’t afford a home, the report’s data asks just who the next generation of farmers will be.

The report noted that the high price of farmland, start-up costs, and always iffy thin profit margins all work to discourage newcomers to the farming industry, which Aske said is “creating a crisis of generational renewal.”

Not all doom and gloom, Aske does suggest that there are ways to reverse the situation, including redistributive land reform, a return of public banking, and even a farmer pension plan.

The Full Report can be seen HERE.

Video: The 15-Year Bet Behind Every New Variety!

Canada is trying to decide how much agricultural research capacity it can afford to lose. Brian Rossnagel believes the better question is whether the country can afford to rebuild it.

The longtime barley and oat breeder makes the case with a simple fact about his profession: the consequences of today’s decisions may not become visible for 10 or 15 years.

“Pick the right parents. That’s the biggest thing,” Rossnagel says. “If you pick the wrong parents, you’re not going to get anywhere—and you don’t know that until 10 years, 15 years later.”

That warning carries particular weight as Agriculture and Agri-Food Canada moves to reduce spending and streamline parts of its science operations. The department’s 2026–27 plan anticipates the loss of approximately 665 positions by 2028–29 and says some research will be reduced where capacity exists in academia or industry. AAFC says the changes will make its science operations more cost-effective over the long term.

For Canada’s seed industry, Rossnagel’s career illustrates what is at stake.

This fall, the retired University of Saskatchewan breeder will be inducted into the Canadian Agricultural Hall of Fame. During his 35-year career at the Crop Development Centre, he helped develop more than 100 barley and oat varieties, including CDC Austenson—one of Western Canada’s most widely grown feed barleys. His induction recognizes not only those varieties, but the collaboration and research system that made them possible.

Rossnagel is quick to emphasize that none of it was the work of one person.

“The first thing I thought about was all the other people who contributed to whatever success I and my program had over the years,” he says. “We know that it’s not an individual who does this. It’s a group—a team.”

That team extends well beyond the breeder whose name appears beside a variety. It includes technicians, pathologists, quality specialists, statisticians, regional testing sites, seed growers and industry partners. It also includes the breeders who came before and those who will carry the germplasm forward.

CDC Fraser barley, for example, moved through three breeding careers. Its parents came from Brian Harvey’s program. Rossnagel advanced the material after Harvey retired, and Aaron Beattie later guided it through registration and release.

That kind of handoff is normal in plant breeding. The person who makes the original cross may never see the resulting variety reach farmers.

It also explains why lost research capacity cannot simply be switched back on when budgets improve.

“If you shut it off, it’s very, very difficult—and particularly costly—to start it up again,” Rossnagel says. “If you have to start from scratch, it’s going to be at least 10 years before anybody notices whether you’re getting anything done or not.”

The concern is not simply how many experimental lines Canada can process. Modern equipment, statistical tools and genetic technologies allow today’s breeding programs to evaluate tens of thousands of lines—far more than Rossnagel could handle when he entered the field in the early 1970s.

But efficiency and automation do not generate every idea.

“If you pare back down, and instead of having six or seven individual scientists concentrating on wheat breeding, you go down and say three people could handle all this, well, that’s half the ideas gone,” he says. “Particularly if you happen to lose the three people who had the really neat and innovative ideas, boy, that’s a problem.”

It is a timely distinction for Canadian agriculture. Consolidating programs may preserve the volume of material moving through a system, at least initially. It may not preserve the diversity of thinking, regional knowledge or willingness to pursue unconventional crosses.

That regional knowledge matters because Canadian agriculture is not one uniform production environment. A variety suited to southern Alberta may face different disease, moisture and maturity pressures than one grown in Manitoba, Ontario or Atlantic Canada.

“Agriculture is applied biology,” Rossnagel says. “Biology, all around the Earth, moves from the poles to the equator. It does not move from Newfoundland to B.C. like politics do.”