Pool of Buyers for Ontario Farmland Getting Bigger

The pool of buyers for Ontario farmland is big – and getting bigger, says a government official. 

Drew Crinklaw, a policy advisor with the Ontario government’s Agricultural Land Use Planning Unit, told a crowd at the Ontario Agricultural Conference earlier this month that it is the size of that pool that is helping to support farmland prices in the province – even in the face of weaker grain and oilseed prices, as well as now-declining but still higher interest rates. 

As the other key plank in the supply-demand equation, farmland prices of course are also being buoyed by the fact there is only so much ground to go around, he said. 

“Even when we’ve got interest rates over 5%, even when commodity prices are weakening, we’re still managing to see positive gains in farmland prices,” Crinklaw said. “And that’s because demand seems somewhat insatiable.” 

So, where are all those new buyers in the pool coming from? According to Crinklaw, an increasingly mobile society means they can come from anywhere in the world. And that means Ontario farmland values are becoming more exposed to global factors, rather than just regional or local influences. For example, Ontario farmland prices, at even $35,000/acre, could appear like a major bargain for a potential buyer in some other part of the world. 

The rising Canadian population – mainly due to immigration - is putting upward pressure on farmland values as well, Crinklaw said, as more urban areas are forced to expand to accommodate the growth. Many municipalities are now undertaking land needs assessments and finding they need to push beyond their current boundaries to provide the required amount of housing, institutional, and commercial projects. 

Such pushes can eat up farmland directly, and/or force prices higher. 

He cited the example of the southwestern Ontario city of London, which between 2000 and 2022 added only about 650 acres to its urban growth boundary, a modest 1.1% increase. Today, London is proposing to add almost another 5,000 acres, an expansion of 8.4%. 

“London is not unique in this,” Crinklaw said, adding the Region of Waterloo is looking to add about 6,000 acres and the Region of Durham almost 10,000 acres. 

As part of the same presentation, Ryan Parker, a land appraiser with London-based Valco Consultants Inc., and who authors an annual report that measures farmland values across 11 counties in the province's southwest, said overall prices have jumped sharply just over the last 15 years. 

Back in 2010, his survey found the median per acre value of farmland for all 11 counties – Huron, Perth, Oxford, Middlesex, Elgin, Lambton, Kent, Essex, Bruce, Grey, and Wellington – was less than $6,000/acre. In 2024, that had risen to just under $26,000. 

Parker said local farmers still represent the vast majority of buyers for Ontario farmland but added that investors and speculators can be in the mix as well.