Decline of Small-Medium Size Farms Threatens Rural Social Structure

An Agri-Food Economic Systems Policy Concepts Paper suggests action to protect the viability of small and medium size farms is needed in order to preserve the social structure of our rural communities. A Policy Concepts Paper released by Agri-Food Economic Systems shows virtually all farm growth is in farms exceeding one million dollars in farm cash receipts while those reporting between 100 and 500 thousand dollars are in steep decline.

Dr. Al Mussell, the Research Lead with Agri-Food Economic Systems and Research Coordinator with the Canadian Agri-Food Policy Institute, suggests this has implications for the social structure of our rural communities.

Clip-Dr. Al Mussell-Agri-Food Economic Systems:

We treat farms as though they are extensions of households and there's a long history of that that goes back to the settlement period in our history. It's one of the reasons that agriculture was tied to immigration and treated uniquely as joint federal-provincial responsibilities and that exists to this day. As a consequence of that we treat farms differently from a property tax perspective.

We have a residential rate for property taxes and then what we turn around and do for farms is we rebate back some portion of those taxes. No other segment of the economy is treated that way. When we think about the status of agriculture in terms of regulations, we give special consideration or in some cases exemptions to things like transportation rules, workplace safety labor rules, some types of environmental rules, etcetera.

Again, that really relates back to the treatment of the farm as an extension of the household. The worry is, as we get the expansion being in the larger and larger farm and the decline of the mid-size farm it removes or erodes away that connection between the household and the farm.