Impervious Odds and Complicated Legacies: Young People’s Pathways into Farming in Ontario, Canada

Abstract

Ontario is the most populated province in Canada and has some of its most productive agricultural soils. However, Ontario faces problems attracting youth into agriculture. Since 1991, the province has lost about two-thirds of its 18,440 young farmers, and less than 10 per cent of Ontario’s current farmers are under the age of 35. Part of these losses can be attributed to the challenges that Ontario’s youth face in becoming a farmer. To understand these challenges, it is necessary to understand the different pathways that young people take to becoming a farmer. By understanding these pathways, it becomes possible to create more opportunities and reduce the challenges that young people must overcome. This chapter will differentiate the pathways of entry into farming for young people in Ontario, highlighting differences in how they access resources, their motivations for farming, and the type of farming that they carry out. Understanding the unique circumstances facing Ontario’s young farmers can help identify ways to encourage young people to begin a career in farming.

Introduction

Ontario is the most populated province in Canada and has some of its most productive agricultural soils. However, Ontario faces problems attracting youth into agriculture. Since 1991, the province has lost about two-thirds of its 18,440 young farmers, and less than 10 per cent of Ontario’s current farmers are under the age of 35. Part of these losses can be attributed to the challenges that Ontario’s youth face in becoming a farmer. To understand these challenges, it is necessary to understand the different pathways that young people take to becoming a farmer. By understanding these pathways, it becomes possible to create more opportunities and reduce the challenges that young people must overcome. This chapter will differentiate the pathways of entry into farming for young people in Ontario, highlighting differences in how they access resources, their motivations for farming, and the type of farming that they carry out. Understanding the unique circumstances facing Ontario’s young farmers can help identify ways to encourage young people to begin a career in farming.

This chapter is organized into three sections. The first section provides a description of the agrarian context within which Ontario’s young farmers operate. This is followed by a profile of the group of young farmers that were interviewed for this chapter. The third section discusses how the respondents became (young) farmers, focusing on the different experiences and challenges of those who are new to farming, those who returned to work on family farms, and those who fall somewhere in between. The conclusion reflects upon the constraints that must be addressed if more young people are to be encouraged to enter farming.

The analysis in this chapter is based on data from Statistics Canada, insights from scholarly literature, and the information collected from interviews with 49 young farmers from across southern Ontario. Most of the interviews were conducted within 100 kilometres of the city of Guelph (Fig. 4.1). The interviews were undertaken by three research assistants who were themselves farmers; many of the farmers interviewed were found through their networks. Interviews ranged from one to three hours. The length of the interview depended on the amount of detail that the farmer was willing to share and the amount of time that the farmer devoted to the interview. While the sample cannot be deemed representative of young farmers in Ontario, the information from these interviews offers rich insights into the experiences and challenges of young farmers and when complemented by scholarly literature and data from Statistics Canada, provides a more well-rounded understanding of young farmers in southern Ontario.

Fig. 4.1

Geospatial map of young farmers interviewed in southern Ontario

Ontario’s Agrarian Context

Food and agriculture play a large role in Ontario’s economy. In the 2016 agricultural census, Ontario had 49,600 of the 193,492 farms in Canada and more than half of the highest-quality Class 1 farmland in the country. Ontario farmers accounted for almost one quarter of all farm revenue in Canada in 2016 (Statistics Canada 2016; Government of Ontario 2019) and Ontario farmers contribute C$7.6 billion¹ to Ontario’s total Gross Domestic Product (GDP) (Ontario Ministry of Agriculture, Food and Rural Affairs 2018).

The average farm size in Ontario is close to 250 acres, while the average Canadian farm is 820 acres. Nonetheless, over the past 15 years, Ontario’s farming communities have witnessed the trend towards fewer and larger farms. Figure 4.2 demonstrates this trend based on the number of acres a farm has, while Table 4.1 demonstrates this trend based on a farmer’s livestock count. From 2001 to 2016, the number of farm operators fell by 17 per cent, from 85,020 to 70,470, and the number of farms also fell by 17 per cent, from 59,728 to 49,600. Figure 4.1 shows that while the number of small farms (<10 acres) has varied, the number of medium-sized farms (10–1119 acres) has fallen dramatically, and the number of large farms (>1120 acres) has grown steadily. The number of small farms (<10 acres) tends to be more variable as the smaller acreage and lower cost make it relatively easier for farmers to enter and exit the sector. By way of contrast, the growth of larger farms has required a significant number of other farms to exit the sector; the correlation with the decline of medium-sized farms is suggestive. Larger farms sell homogeneous goods into commercial markets and benefit greatly from economies of scale.²

Fig. 4.2

Change in number of farms by acreage (2001–2016). (Source: Table: 32-10-0156-01 (formerly CANSIM 004-0005))

Table 4.1 Number and size of Ontario livestock farms (2001–2016)

While farms get bigger, the distribution of owned and rented land has remained relatively consistent; about 70 per cent of farmland is owned and the other 30 per cent is rented. The distribution of rented land, however, has changed. Between 2011 and 2016, land under sharecropping increased from 305,202 acres to 361,575 acres, while the number of acres leased from the government decreased from 97,779 to 89,140 acres.

For farmers with access to land, both the earnings from farming and value of Ontario farmland have increased. Table 4.2 provides a summary of how Ontario farmers measure up with respect to their values for key financial indicators. The current ratio can be defined as a measure of a farm’s ability to pay off its short-term debts with its liquid assets. Current assets are cash or other assets that can be converted into cash within a year, while current liabilities are debts that must be paid within a year. As demonstrated in Table 4.2, on average Ontario farms have a current ratio of >2, meaning that Ontario farms have at least C$2 available to them in the form of liquid assets for every dollar of expected debt that they will have for that year. Moreover, Table 4.2 demonstrates that Ontario farms have a long-term asset to long-term liability ratio of around <0.2, meaning that less than 20 per cent of long-term assets would need to be sold in order to pay off all outstanding long-term debt. Both of these ratios suggest that Ontario farmers face a low level of risk and have a correspondingly strong ability to be able to manage medium-term financial challenges that they may face.³ Subtracting short and long-term liabilities from short and long-term assets provides an average net worth of farms. In Ontario, this value almost doubled between 2009 and 2017, as estimated farm net worth climbed from $1,567,404 to $2,966,429. Furthermore, net farm income more than doubled from $41,107 in 2009 to $89,670 in 2017. Given that the average annual income in Ontario for those over 16 years old was $46,700, Ontario farmers appear to be in a good position relative to the rest of the population (Statistics Canada 2017). There appear to be two drivers of this higher net farm income. The first is that commodity prices have significantly increased from 2009 onwards. Figures 4.3, 4.4, and 4.5 show that commodity prices for Ontario’s common agricultural products have been higher than usual, but whether this trend continues remains unknown. Furthermore, as discussed earlier, Ontario’s farms are becoming larger, which means that they will tend to have a larger net farm income.

Table 4.2 Average financial values for farms in Ontario

Fig. 4.3

Ontario corn, soybean, and wheat revenues. (Source: Table: 32-10-0359-01 (formerly CANSIM 001-0017))

Fig. 4.4

Relative change in red meat prices (2003–2018). (Source: Table: 32-10-0077-01 (formerly CANSIM 002-0043))

Fig. 4.5

Relative change in prices for supply-managed goods (2003–2018). (Source: Table: 32-10-0077-01 (formerly CANSIM 002-0043))

The strong farm real estate market is also an indicator of the financial strength of the sector. In 2018, the average value of land and buildings was more than C$11,000 per acre in Ontario, which is close to double the value of land in any other province; the next closest is Québec, where average land values are around $6000 per acre (Statistics Canada 2018). Moreover, it is more than double the average value of Ontario farmland in 2009, which was approximately C$5000 per acre. Like commodity prices, Fig. 4.6 demonstrates that Ontario farmland values have followed a similar, increasing trend from 2009 onwards. This increase in the value of land can make it harder for new farmers to access the land that they need to get their start in farming.

Fig. 4.6

Value of Ontario land and buildings ($/Acre). (Source: Table: 32-10-0047-01 (formerly CANSIM 002-0003))

Despite challenges in accessing land, changing consumer preferences in Canada have opened up a number of opportunities for smaller, less intensive models of agriculture where farmers can directly market their products to end users. These opportunities are better suited for new farmers as they can function on a smaller land base and don’t require the expensive barns and equipment needed for commercial agriculture. While we see increasing farm sizes and consolidation among those in commercial agriculture, there are an increasing number of farms that run smaller operations and sell specialty products, directly marketing to local customers. These different approaches to farming bring different challenges for new farmers looking to enter the sector.

Who Are the Young Farmers?

A descriptive summary of the young farmers interviewed for this study can be found in Table 4.3. We define a “returning” or “continuing” young farmer as someone who had grown up on a farm and their farming career was in some way connected to their family’s farm. A “new” young farmer is someone who was farming but who did not grow up on a farm. In total, 49 young farmers were interviewed: 28 were considered returning farmers (16 female, 12 male), while 21 were new farmers (11 female, 10 male). Returning farmers were an average age of 33. They had often spent more than a decade learning to farm before beginning to farm independently at around age 24. On average, new farmers had a later start. After completing some form of post-secondary education, they typically began to learn to farm at age 22 and were farming independently within five years, when they were 27. As a result, returning farmers had the advantage of taking more time to learn how to farm and starting to farm independently at an earlier age. These findings are similar to those of Monllor (2012), who found that continuing farmers in Southern Ontario (and Catalonia) tended to start farming more than five years earlier than newcomers.⁴

Table 4.3 Summary of Ontario young farmers in our study

Monllor (2012) also describes how continuers (returning in our study) and newcomers (new in our study) follow two distinct models of farming. Monllor highlights how continuers tend to follow commercial agriculture while newcomers tend to practise small-scale farming. Statistics Canada does not explicitly differentiate between continuing and new farmers when collecting census data. However, the finding that continuers and newcomers tended to follow distinct farming models was largely replicated among the present study’s young farmers.

Based on the interviews, being a returning or new farmer also influences the type of agricultural products that the young farmer produces. Fourteen of the 16 livestock farmers were returning farmers, while 16 of the 22 plant farmers were new farmers. It makes sense that returning farmers would be more likely to have livestock because of the significant costs of building barns. For new farmers, the start-up costs for a small plant or vegetable farm are much lower than those faced when entering livestock production.

Of the 49 farmers interviewed, 45 said that they worked full-time on the farm and 39 of them derived most of their income from working on the farm; six respondents said that most of their income came from non-farm activities. Given that average net off-farm income was more than three times the amount of net farm income for Ontario farmers in 2013, the number of farmers in this research reliant on farm income is very high compared to the national data (Statistics Canada 2013).

Surprisingly, the returning and new young farmers in our study were just as likely to own land, with about 60 per cent of each group being landowners.⁵ Excluding an outlier who owned 2000 acres through marriage, the average number of acres owned for returning farmers was 232 and for new farmers was 56. New farmers were more likely to rent in or sharecrop land than returning farmers. Part of the reason may be that new farmers face greater difficulty finding good pieces of land to buy that are the appropriate size for their business. For new farmers, this can be a challenge because municipalities favour larger farm sizes as a means of retaining farmland. Sharecropping is an alternative way for new farmers to access land as they share management and profits with the landowner but do not have to pay a mortgage or land rental fees. While contradictory to our findings, knowledge of sharecropping opportunities may be more limited for new farmers, given their lack of community networks. In terms of land rental, knowledge of government-owned land for rent is relatively more accessible, which means that the reduction in government-owned acres that are available for rent eliminates some of these opportunities for new farmers. A few young farmers had inherited land and the only ones who had were returning farmers. Returning farmers were, however, more optimistic about the likelihood of inheriting land compared to new farmers, and the size of their expected inheritance was much larger than the expected inheritance of new farmers.

Becoming a Young Farmer

The data collected from interviews paired with the characteristics of Ontario’s agrarian landscape suggest a wide diversity in the size and types of farms that exist in Ontario. While commercial agriculture continues to expand and consolidate, there is an increasing number of farmers who run smaller operations and sell specialty products by directly marketing to local customers. This range not only produces different types of farmers but also different pathways into becoming a farmer. It is by understanding these pathways that it becomes possible to create more opportunities for young people to enter the sector. Therefore, this section will draw upon the interviews to differentiate the pathways of new and returning young farmers, highlighting the differences in how they access resources, their motivations for farming, and the type of farming that they carry out.

Becoming a Returning Farmer

Returning young farmers grew up on a family farm and learned to farm by helping their parents with the farm work. Farming became a strong part of their identity at an early age and many returned to farm within a few years of completing post-secondary education. While some pursued diplomas and degrees outside of agriculture, it was common for returning farmers to complete their schooling in a university or college agricultural programme. Typical of this pathway is Rachel,⁶ a 27-year-old egg farmer from London, Ontario. Growing up, Rachel worked on her family’s egg farm before attending the University of Guelph to study Animal Nutrition. During that time, she participated in the school’s poultry club and worked for the university’s poultry research facility. After finishing her undergraduate degree, the family rule was that the children were not allowed to come home and farm until they had worked off-farm for a couple of years. This is a common rule among farm families and most returning farmers see the value in taking the time to work somewhere else, “to get experience to make sure that farming is what you want to do.” After working at a local feed company for a couple of years, Rachel returned home to work on the family farm. In Ontario, many family farms are incorporated businesses and one way to transition the farm is to have the younger generation gradually buy shares in the business. For Rachel, these shares were a part of the compensation that she received for her work in addition to an hourly wage. Now, Rachel manages the newest egg barn, helps with other parts of the family operation, and spends a lot of time learning at sector meetings, conferences, and through courses.

Not all returning farmers follow a preplanned, organized transition. Mike is a young dairy goat farmer who lives on his father’s farm. Growing up, Mike helped his father with taking care of the goats. Despite his father owning most of the farm assets, Mike knew that he would have to take charge of the use of those assets if he wanted a chance at full-time farming. Thus, shortly after finishing high school, he took matters into his own hands:

It was all me for the decision to switch it over. I said like, I don’t want to be 50 years old and have you own it and be just you pay me. I don’t like that. I don’t see the point in it, to be honest. So, I’m like I want to switch it all over to my name, and he’s like, okay well yeah we can talk about that and blah blah blah … Then I phoned Gay Lea (the milk purchaser) and got them to switch the milk cheque to my bank account. And then I went out and got all of the bills that were getting billed to dad, switched it all over to my name and then the next month the milk cheque went into my bank account and then all the bills came to me. He was like, oh that was pretty easy.

Although this process worked for Mike and his family, one of the reasons that it was possible was that Mike’s father had become less interested in farming and had begun to establish a career in landscaping. His father also gave him a discount when he purchased the dairy goat herd in lieu of being paid for work that he did on the farm growing up.

Not all transitions are as smooth and quick as they were for Rachel and Mike. For many returning farmers, the transition is often the most challenging part of their career. This was Jessica’s experience as she looked to come home and work on her parent’s dairy farm. As with Rachel, Jessica grew up working on her parent’s farm before attending university. During university, she worked part-time at a local car dealership and once she graduated, she continued to work there for two years. Jessica quit the dealership when she became pregnant and began farming with her husband on her family’s sheep, dairy, and cash crop farm. At the time, her father and her uncle owned the farm. Although money was tight, things were going relatively well until one morning, without warning, her father abandoned the farm and left the area. With her uncle on vacation, this left Jessica, her husband, and her cousin to look after the farm. As a result, Jessica and her husband ended up buying a large portion of her father’s shares in the business. As Jessica took over the accounting for the business, she knew that she and her husband needed to radically change its focus:

We were doing about 1500 acres of cash cropping. Which at that time … it was not cash cropping. It was cropping and losing money …. I knew what was happening financially and I was the one who had the rapport with the bank and I knew what was coming down the pipe and I said to my partner if we are going to make a go of this then we have to do something now. So, I looked at him and I said, the cows are what’s making us money. We need to buy that, we need that.

In the end, Jessica and her husband ended up splitting the business with her uncle and moving the cows to eastern Ontario where they bought a new farm. Despite taking on a significant amount of debt and moving away from their homestead, this was the only way that Jessica could continue her family’s legacy as dairy farmers. Although a returning farmer, Jessica’s story shows that not all pathways from farm child to farmer are smooth transitions.

One thing that can help to ease the pathways of returning farmers is the collection of risk management programmes that governments offer to farmers. Delivered by an organization called Agricorp,⁷ there is a unique risk management programme for cattle, edible horticulture, grains and oilseeds, hogs, sheep, and veal farmers. These programmes are designed to help mitigate against the production and price risks that farmers face. Payments are made when prices fall below the annual support level, defined by average sector cost of production, and producers can choose the amount of coverage that they would like to purchase. As Chad, who is a young returning grain farmer working a large amount of land, put it: “One of the biggest things that is a success story that our government has done is our crop insurance programme for grains and oil seeds. It has been great. It has been a saviour for us. It gives you the confidence year in year out to continue to put a crop in.”

While this programme is useful for returning/commercial farmers, it does not mitigate the risks that new, smaller-scale farmers face. This is because these farmers do not reflect the sector average in terms of cost of production. New farmers tend to have a higher cost of production as they do not have the big equipment or barns found in commercial agriculture. As a result, the coverage offered through these programmes is inadequate, given the risk profile that new farmers face. This is just one of their many unique challenges when compared to returning farmers.

Becoming a “New” Farmer

New farmers do not have a family farm that they were raised on or to which they can return. As a result, they typically learn about and develop an interest in farming later in life compared to returning farmers. Their reasons for entering farming vary, but none of the new farmers interviewed said that they entered the sector because they expected to earn a high financial return for their work. Rather, it was commonly a combination of lifestyle choice and the desire for work that felt meaningful that motivated them to enter farming:

I got into farming for a lot of different reasons. One of the primary ones is enjoying working outside and another was studying environmentalism and ecological farm systems and having an affinity for what was happening on ecological farms. I was at the University of Guelph studying rural agricultural development and so I was exposed to things that were happening rurally in other countries and didn’t know a lot about Canada so I started volunteering on farms here to get a sense of what was happening here and then it kind of evolved from there. I also had some health problems, so I was shifting my diet to more whole foods, more vegetables, and felt like everything kind of coming together in what I enjoyed … Every time I worked on a farm, I felt very content and felt like at the end of the day, I got so many different tasks done that you could just see, and it was more satisfying than other work I had done.—Katrina, young woman farmer

At 28, Katrina (in the above quote) and her husband own and operate a small vegetable farm just outside of Guelph. Together they took out a loan to buy the farm in 2016 and directly market their products to local restaurants and to the members of their community-supported agriculture programme. Prior to buying their farm, they rented land and buildings, keeping costs down while building their customer base. Indeed, it was their customer base that partly enabled them to buy a farm: “Because we had a whole bunch of clients, we actually did some crowdfunding because they already knew that we wanted to farm and so we did that. And that was part of our down payment.” However, securing the loan would never have been possible without family support, which provided them with the additional money that they needed for the down payment. Katrina highlighted this as one of the biggest challenges for new farmers: “Buying land, I think that’s the number one. Yes, we could secure a loan, but the size of the down payment that is required these days for farms is unrealistic for the average person.”

For new farmers, the price of land makes ownership next to impossible. For those who do not inherit land or who do not have a financial benefactor, renting is the only option. However, whether buying or renting, fields in Ontario are much typically larger than that which any new farmer would need, further increasing the cost of entering farming. While landowners that rent out could sub-divide their fields into different sections, most landowners avoid renting small sections to more than one tenant because renting the entire farm to one commercial agricultural producer is easier. Municipalities also prefer land not to be subdivided.

Denise is a 32-year-old new farmer who was able to find a work around for this issue of accessing appropriately sized land parcels. She was able to find a publicly owned piece of land that was used as an incubator facility for new farmers. This land was divided into smaller pieces and was made available to rent through an organization called FarmStart. Although this organization has since dissolved, the property was purchased by another organization, which continues to rent part of the original farmland to small producers such as Denise: “The reason I’m there is that it’s a relic property of FarmStart. So, FarmStart established this relationship with them when they (the hospitality organization) purchased the farm property. Basically, I rent directly from them, I have access to land, communal barn space, and then there is a staff member that will do tractor work that I pay for by the hour.”

Other new farmers find land to rent from family members, friends, or landowners who have properties in regions with more variable land types (soil, rock, foliage, waterways), with smaller sections of arable land. This fragmentation makes the land less convenient for commercial agriculture. However, finding these rental farms can still be challenging. Stacey, a 33-year-old farmer from Peterborough, describes her experience searching for land:

We were still looking for land that winter after we moved, and nothing was coming up. There is this website here called “Farms at Work” and they try to connect landowners with land-seekers and so we had contacted a couple of people. There were not that many people offering land. But nothing really seemed like quite the right fit and there was no affordable land close enough to Peterborough, although we did look. So, I sort of came pleadingly to my family, my aunt and uncle and cousin. My aunt and uncle farm this land, which belongs to my cousin, and they were like we could probably like find an acre of land somewhere in some field that would work for you.

New farmers must also find ways to learn and develop the skills needed to farm successfully. Many new farmers acquire formal agriculture education through various college and university programmes that tend to focus specifically on non-conventional farming practices. Many respondents found these programmes essential to becoming a farmer as they learn how to farm and also gained access to a network of farmers who operated in this way. Many programmes required internships where students could work on a farm and apply what they had learned in school. In addition to this formal education and work experience, many new farmers continued their training through internships and work placements after graduation. Everdale Organic Farm is one farm in particular that new farmers repeatedly mentioned. For many, Everdale provided them with the training and work experience that they needed to develop the skills to run a successful farm. Stacey enjoyed the benefits that working at Everdale provided:

I would say the main ways that I acquired my farming skills were (through) my internship. That was like my introduction. I learned the growing and harvesting but not any of the planning at Ignatius (another farm), and then so my real opportunity to learn the planning was at Everdale working as farm staff … that was perfect! Because there I was a farm manager and that gave me responsibilities, but people were there to guide me and help me if I didn’t know what to do. I participated in some of the education days that the interns got to do (at Everdale).

While these internships provided training, respondents repeatedly pointed to the fact that they were either unpaid or paid very little. For new farmers looking to start their own operation, this made working as an intern somewhat incompatible with building their own business. Not only was the pay insufficient to supplement the start-up costs of their own farm, but the peak periods of work when they would be busy on their own farms would also be the peak periods when they would be required for their internship. As a result, many new farmers had to work two jobs, on their own farm and as an intern.

Between Returning and New

For some returning young farmers, simply buying farm assets is not an option as the farm (for whatever reason) is not able to bring or keep them on as farm labourers. For these young farmers, it was up to them to find a way to create a full-time farming opportunity for themselves. Consider Natalie, a 38-year-old sheep farmer from eastern Ontario. Natalie grew up on dairy farm in southwestern Ontario, and like many returning farmers, she worked for two years after completing her university degree. After that, she and her husband Ben started to work full time on her parent’s dairy farm with the rest of her family. Ben describes the difficulties that this created over the five years that it lasted:

I started working with her parents and her brother and we moved into a farmhouse as part of our salary. That kind of proceeded for about a year-and-a-half and then we got pregnant and were expecting our first child. Natalie went on maternity leave and made the decision, after more discussion with her family, that there would be opportunity for her there as well. So, she never went back to corporate John Deere. So then, there were five adults full time on the farm, we were milking about 140 Holsteins. And the barn wasn’t old by any means; it was only like 10 years old. But we decided that we should milk more cows to have more cash flow to support more families. So, we designed and built a new 220-head barn to milk 240 cows, which we did for a short while. And then, it was family complications, differences of opinions, succession planning was progressing but failing sort of. Communication was not good and there were issues and troubles and people were bottling it up and just working with each other all ticked off. Day in day out, and it just came to a breaking point. And it was our marriage that was suffering immensely, we basically had to … Well, I had to pick between my wife and her farm. So, that was a no-brainer. And, at the same time, we were told by her parents that there was never any conflict or issues before we came around. Therefore, in their opinion, they saw us as the stem of the troubles. So, we said okay, fine, then we will leave. So, as much as it was devastating and heartbreaking, we walked away from her family farm and there were hard feelings for a couple of years. We saw very little of each other.

For a few years Ben and Natalie worked in the agricultural sector while they looked for a farm that they could purchase. When an affordable farm became available close to Ben’s parent’s place, they attended the auction, and despite not getting the farm, they caught the attention of an elderly sheep farming couple who were looking to sell their business. Although Natalie and Ben were not new farmers, they were new to sheep. Here is how Natalie described the process:

So, that was April 21st (auction day) and on Mother’s Day, the middle of May, we came back here and met with the people who owned the farm and we spent eight hours here you know, going over their books. They opened up everything to us. We walked all 300 acres that were on this farm, they pretty much walked us through the whole business and gave us a pretty good idea of what we would be buying, and you know, what it would be like. And yeah, so, we left here and kind of shook hands and said yes. So, we bought the farm and moved in September of 2012 and the couple that we bought the farm from, kept 70 acres at the back of the farm on the next road and built a house and part of the deal was that they would mentor us. You know, on the business so that we would know because we knew nothing about sheep and when we bought it, it came with 650 sheep. So, they came over here every single day for the first several months … Into the second year is when they slowed down in coming and we had kind of said to them, you know, we are ready to take our approach. And we made some little changes the first year and then the third year we made a few more changes and we don’t really see them at all now.

Natalie and Ben had the opportunity to work on the family farm for five years, but some young farmers never get this opportunity. Maggie grew up on a beef farm in eastern Ontario. After deciding that veterinary school wasn’t for her, she graduated from university and began working for a feed company. Throughout her childhood, Maggie had been slowly building up her beef herd, which her parents allowed her to keep on their farm in lieu of paying her for her labour. A few years after graduating, she and her husband bought a farm close to her parents and moved her beef herd over from her parent’s place. Unfortunately, operating in commercial agriculture didn’t generate enough money for Maggie or her husband to quit their jobs and farm full time. So, after Maggie had her first child, they created a plan to allow at least one of them to become a full-time farmer:

It was too much to both try and work full time off the farm plus manage the farm and the cow herd and try and raise a child so we decided to put together a plan that would allow the farm to at least be sustainable for itself and then with plans of hopefully bringing one person home and then eventually the second person. So, we put together a plan to start direct marketing our beef so that’s how we got started. We started attending farmers’ markets, one in Toronto and one in Kingston.

Creating this plan was the first step to creating a farm business servicing a very specific market niche. As Maggie describes it:

It was interesting because you were obviously able to get a premium for your beef, but it was a really low volume and it was really unpredictable. If it happened to rain and people didn’t come … So, there were challenges, but it was a really good way to get ourselves introduced into the different cuts and what consumers were interested in and really just trying to get our product to match what the consumers were asking for. We did that for a year or two. We were in the one (farmer’s market) at Kingston when we had a guy come to our booth and he wanted to know if he could get a sirloin steak and I was like yeah for sure. And then he was telling me how he was going to use this for his appetizer and serve it over the salad. And I thought, oh that sounds amazing, I want to eat at your house. So, he left with his steak and then the vendor beside me was like, do you know who that is? And I said no, I have no idea. It was just a normal guy dressed in normal clothes. And she says: that’s this chef at this really high-end restaurant, Le Chateau Noir in Kingston, and I was like oh that’s so cool. So, I went home and told my husband and mom and dad that our beef was going to be sold at this restaurant and that was kind of cool. So, the next week, lo and behold he comes walking back to the booth again and said that beef was incredible, can I get more, can I get this consistently in a larger volume? And I was like sure, this is what I need in a larger volume. That basically started the next evolution of our business and we started direct marketing to mainly restaurants—it really fit our lifestyle a lot better.

Maggie’s opportunity to farm was a consequence of her upbringing, but it was her individual creativity and drive that allowed her to create a farm that sells its beef to restaurants all over Ontario and farm full time.

Another unique returning farmer was Jared, a 33-year-old pig farmer from west of Guelph. Unlike most returning farmers, Jared disliked farming: “Growing up on the farm, I wanted nothing to do with it, I hated everything about it, and I couldn’t get out of there soon enough.” He did, however, enjoy agriculture and decided to pursue a business degree that focused on the sector at university. However, after graduating, he came to realize that this wasn’t the life he wanted either: “It took me like eight months of sitting in an office to be like, well, this isn’t going to work. Because I hate sitting still and I couldn’t handle an office mentality where it was like I’m done work at three, why can’t I go home. I’m just going to sit here staring at my screen and I thought to myself, you know, this is asinine.”

After a year of work, Jared returned to graduate school where he studied agricultural economics. It was then that he decided that maybe he would be interested in taking over his parent’s pig farm. After graduating, he returned home, but it did not go as planned:

I started working for Mom and Dad in 2010 and that was kind of in the midst of a brief pause of an otherwise very terrible five years in pig farming. So, we started expanding my parents’ operation in 2012 and that did not go well. It was still all owned by them, but I was driving expansion. This was my first real life experience where an Excel model didn’t work in a real-life barn … So, when the expansion didn’t work out, I kind of pulled right back and I did some travelling and I ended up getting approached by an Ontario political party who asked to run for them in the upcoming election.

At this point Jared had gone from hating farming to driving the expansion on his family’s farm to running to be a member of Ontario’s parliament. Although Jared didn’t win, he did become a political advisor for the province’s Minister of Agriculture for a couple of years while also beginning to buy some of his parent’s farm assets from them. Then a shift happened:

Over time we decided that I wasn’t going to run in the upcoming election and that I would exit from politics because it was not sustainable to be commuting to Toronto. We basically started looking at what our goals were for household income and in the meantime, I was able to find a market where we could sell niche pigs. This was to sell certified humane pork to a packer in the US. Traditionally, you would have to go through a feed company to find those contracts, but I border on being too stubborn and I hate being told where I have to buy my feed. So, I was able to get a direct contract with the processor and through this I was able to find a full-time role for myself on the farm. I had to do this because if I was going to come back to farm full time, we had two full-time employees and I didn’t want to let either of them go. Beyond the fact that I didn’t want to let them go, working in a barn full time isn’t my cup of tea.

In addition to buying his parent’s commercial pig herd, Jared now successfully manages an organization of about 20 other farmers that he contracts to grow certified humane pigs for him. Most of these farmers were already following the standards for certified humane pork but were selling their pigs into the commercial agricultural market. By working with Jared, these farmers were able to earn a premium for their product and Jared was able to earn a living by creating a business based on his ability to facilitate this connection. Although a returning farmer, Jared took a unique route to becoming a full-time farmer himself.

Conclusion

Young people face significant challenges in becoming and being a successful farmer. While many returning farmers already have a farm in place to help springboard their career, these young people need to navigate family relationships, inheritances, and fairness while transitioning the farm from one generation to the next. Farms are also changing, and returning young farmers need to create new opportunities to ensure that the business stays viable, competitive, and relevant to what consumers are seeking.

New farmers face different challenges. For them, it is difficult to acquire both the physical resources and technical training needed. Most begin as interns on other farms where they gain valuable experience but do not make enough to save up and start their own farm. As a result, many new farmers rely on a benefactor to help them get started. When buying is not an option, they must seek out rent or sharecropping opportunities, which can be difficult to find.

These differences highlight the significant diversity in the way that young people farm across the province. Supporting these different farmers will require targeted policies that suit their specific needs. Young farmers are looking for opportunities: an opportunity to learn, an opportunity to find land and equipment, and an opportunity to try farming for themselves. Policies should ease the capacity of young farmers to take advantage of potential opportunities, which in turn means understanding their needs and the structural challenges that different young farmers face.

List of Primary Sources (not actual names)

Chad, male, 33 years, married, returning, grain farmer, runs 4500 acres.

Denise, female, 32 years, married, new, flower farmer, sells directly at markets.

Jared, male, 33 years, married, returning, pig farmer, owns pigs and runs certified humane pig business.

Jessica, female, 37 years, married, returning, dairy farmer, 100 cows.

Katrina, female, 28 years, married, new, vegetable farmer, sells to restaurants and through her Community-Supported Agriculture (CSA)

Maggie, female, 37, married, returning, direct markets beef to Ontario restaurants.

Mike, male, 22 years, single, returning, dairy goat farmer, 350 milking goats.

Natalie, female, 38 years, married, returning, sheep farmer, 1000 ewes.

Rachel, female, 27 years, single, returning, egg farmer, manages part of operations on family farm.

Stacey, female, 33 years, married, new, vegetable farmer, sells at market.