By Keith Roulston

    I’m going to show my age here, but when I read an article that showed the latest values for farmland in Ontario, I nearly flipped out.
    According to the article the value of neighbouring farms in my area of Huron County, in the southwestern part of Ontario, increased by 13.1 per cent last year. The farmland sold, varied from $15,000 to $41,700 an acre in our region in 2023.
    I grew up on a farm north of Lucknow, across the border in the Mid-Western region where farmland had an average increase of 8.5 per cent per acre for a value range of $13,800 to $28,000 an acre.
    And the headline on the story said “Farmland value growth slowed in 2023, FCC” with a subheading reading that the growth was strongest in Saskatchewan, Quebec and Manitoba.
    In my neighbourhood, most of the resident farmers are senior citizens, or nearing that age, right now. At those prices, what beginning farmer could afford to buy them out? We have the son of one neighbour, who I think of as young but he’s helping  his son get started in farming. Another young neighbour has an off-farm job but  is trying to take over his parents’ farm.
    The rest of our farm, nearly 250 acres, is owned by someone who rents the land to a large-scale cashcropper. Several of the other farms, once going concerns, have families living in the fine houses built by the McGowan family, the Scottish families that prospered on our land after they settled it nearly 200 years ago, but cashcroppers farm the land.
    Is this the future of rural Ontario – people who live in whatever farm houses remain while the land is purchased by cashcroppers?
    How things have changed over the last 80 years. My parents bought a farm north of Lucknow after Dad returned home from fighting in Italy, Holland and Germany during World War II. Like many ambitious young farmers, he was betrayed by economics.  During the war Canadian farmers had been encouraged to maximize production to feed England. But England was in debt and cut  food imports. Canadian farm prices plummeted while the British lived with rations for years.
    My father soon farmed on the side and worked in factories. My older sister and her husband bought the farm in the 1960s. My parents, if I remember properly, bought the entire farm for $3,500 in 1946 and sold it for double that to my sister 20 years later. Some 30 years later still, my brother-in-law got deathly ill and sold to a Mennonite. Old Order Mennonites and Amish were expanding into southern Bruce and northern Huron at the time. I don’t know but I’m guessing they aren’t setting up their children in farming here at today’s prices.
    Most farm families live better today than we did in the 1950s and farms concentrate on growing crops with some also specializing in dairy, poultry, beef cattle, hogs, sheep or goats. Still, it’s hard for people to earn the sort of living people who aren’t farmers simply expect to live.
    I’ve been a stiff critic of the current government for its support of expanding urban growth onto farmland but when you see those farmland prices it’s hard to see long-term certainty for farm production. When people must spend $1.5 million to buy farmland — and how many farmers can get along with 100 acres these days — it’s hard to see how farming can continue. At the same time, as our population swells, we’re going to need more food. Right now people are complaining about the prices of food but the supermarket shelves are still filled.
    Hey, I’m old and soon this problem won’t be mine anymore. And I know we oldtimers often bellyache about ”the way things used to be”, but I’m worried about the future — how we can afford to grow food on this expensive land. ◊