Farm numbers decline but women are now 30 per cent of all farmers

Aug 17, 2022

OTTAWA — The number of Canadian farm operators continues to fall, but women are a growing percentage of working farmers and now account for just more than 30 per cent of all farmers, according to the 2021 Canadian Census of Agriculture.

The fact that the census even counts women as farm operators is remembered by Dianne Harkin as a hard-won victory.

The retired Winchester-area dairy farmer recalls how Statistics Canada was persuaded to let farm women count as more than wives by according them status as operators on the census form. “A husband and wife could indicate themselves as ‘operator one’ and ‘operator two,’” recalls Harkin of the 1970s policy change.

The federal agency was stuck in time until Harkin publicly criticized it in the media. At the time, she was founder and leader of the Women for the Survival of Agriculture, an influential advocacy group that spread to chapters across the country. Statistics Canada duly sent out a female bureaucrat to hear the group’s demands at a business meeting. The visitor showed up wearing coveralls and rubber boots, and Harkin still thinks back on that fashion faux pas as typical of the stereotyping all farmers had to endure.

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Video: Spring 2026 weather outlook for Wisconsin; What an early-arriving El Niño could mean

Northeast Wisconsin is a small corner of the world, but our weather is still affected by what happens across the globe.

That includes in the equatorial Pacific, where changes between El Niño and La Niña play a role in the weather here -- and boy, have there been some abrupt changes as of late.

El Niño and La Niña are the two phases of what is collectively known as the El Niño Southern Oscillation, or ENSO for short. These are the swings back and forth from unusually warm to unusually cold sea surface temperatures in the Pacific Ocean along the equator.

Since this past September, we have been in a weak La Niña, which means water temperatures near the Eastern Pacific equator have been cooler than usual. That's where we're at right now.

Even last fall, the long-term outlook suggested a return to neutral conditions by spring and potentially El Niño conditions by summer.

But there are some signs this may be happening faster than usual, which could accelerate the onset of El Niño.

Over the last few weeks, unusually strong bursts of westerly winds farther west in the Pacific -- where sea surface temperatures are warmer than average -- have been observed. There is a chance that this could accelerate the warming of those eastern Pacific waters and potentially push us into El Niño sooner than usual.

If we do enter El Nino by spring -- which we'll define as the period of March, April and May -- there are some long-term correlations with our weather here in Northeast Wisconsin.

Looking at a map of anomalously warm weather, most of the upper Great Lakes doesn't show a strong correlation, but in general, the northern tiers of the United States do tend to lean to that direction.

The stronger correlation is with precipitation. El Niño conditions in spring have historically come with a higher risk of very dry weather over that time frame, so this will definitely be a transition we'll have to watch closely as we move out of winter.