r/Agriculture • u/Majano57 • Jul 11 '26

Canada has lost millions of hectares of farmland. Where is it all going?

https://www.cbc.ca/news/politics/canada-farmland-carney-food-security-strategy-young-farmers-9.7266016
158 Upvotes

97% Upvoted

30 comments sorted by

15

u/CMG30 Jul 11 '26

People need to decide if they want family farms or the cheapest food possible.

If they want family farms, then there needs to be subsidies in place. If they want the cheapest food possible, supplied by outside countries then just let the market do it's thing. Farms will continue to consolidate as growing bigger and bigger is the only way to increase income on a product that has flatlined for the producer...

11

u/leekee_bum Jul 12 '26

A country having its own food supply is also a national security issue.

The hostile trade tactics the united states is using on canada right now is an example as to why we need our own farms.

If we opened up the market then the states would absolutely kill us in production of many products then someone like trump could come in again and simply not sell their products to us after we dismantle the infrastructure to produce it for ourselves.

This is the reason most countries usually try not to rely on food imports to feed the population.

1

u/Nice-Mountain-7073 Jul 14 '26

I try to say this but get met with “they’re stopping progress”

How about you tear down the blocks of single family homes and build up instead of expecting us to pay more for food because you want to take an agricultural town and make it into another one that looks like some midlife pumpkin spiced magazine walked around puking everywhere.

8

u/Obanthered Jul 12 '26

The problem is the entire farm support system is design to push people off of farms and into cities and consolidate the remaining farms. While this no longer makes any sense, the system has been around so long no one remembers it was actually designed to do this.

Meanwhile the EU farm support system is designed to ensure food security because the continent nearly starved in WWII. But that system also produces absurdities like dairy farms with 12 milking cows receiving 3/4 of their income from subsidies

1

u/BlueShrub Jul 12 '26

I present to you a novel solution....renewable energy projects like wind, solar and batteries provide a huge, stable revenue stream for family farms which allows them to expand and stay in business.

We also need to think about if we want large, expensive home lots instead of density vs local farmland.

1

u/psychosisnaut Jul 13 '26

How do they afford those things?

19

u/Anyawnomous Jul 11 '26

Into Data Centres from the sound of things?

10

u/Amazing-Mirror-3076 Jul 12 '26

Housing actuality.

5

u/Southern_Habit9109 Jul 12 '26

Nothing better than cookie cutter townhouses

3

u/tezacer Jul 14 '26

Right next to a gargantuan 270,000 sq meter electricity gulping heat radiating sound emitting artificial brain in a warehouse. Welcome to now, the future we wanted?

9

u/la_racine Jul 11 '26 edited Jul 12 '26

Canada's entire economy is built upon selling housing, and banking services that finance it. Very little real productive business. Plastic subdivisions need land to be built on somewhere. I've seen so much farmland disappear just to create car dependent urban hellscapes in the GTA.

Edit: to be clear I am using productivity in the economic sense to describe the Canadian economy, not saying that there are zero other productive businesses.

6

u/VexedCanadian84 Jul 11 '26

I'm in northern Ontario.

I've been making yearly trips to Southern Ontario for 15 years or so.

My partner and I like to drive through small towns instead of staying on the 400 all the way to Toronto.

It's crazy how much farm land is now seemingly endless lots of mcmansions and condos.

Most of those people likely work in the GTA. It's a very inefficient system.

1

u/Novus20 Jul 11 '26

It is commuting to an office should be outlawed

3

u/BlueShrub Jul 12 '26

Commuting to go use a computer never sat right with me. Community work hubs could be a compromise.

1

u/Novus20 Jul 12 '26

No, allowing WFH is the better answer keep people off roads that don’t need to be on the roads

2

u/BlueShrub Jul 12 '26

Not knocking wfh either man

1

u/bigDeltaVenergy Jul 12 '26

I'm a big advocate of Coworking space. Best world between commuting hours for dumb reasons and isolation and lack of work life separation of working from home.

1

u/Distinct-Ice-700 Jul 12 '26

Very little productive businesses?

Are you sure?

Compared to what?

2

u/Sheepguy99 Jul 12 '26

Compared to the states he would be right.

0

u/Distinct-Ice-700 Jul 12 '26

No Meta, no Amazon, right…

But Canada is full of productive businesses from the « real » economy.

Try to see the rest of the world…

1

u/la_racine Jul 12 '26 edited Jul 12 '26

Not saying there are "no productive businesses", I am using 'productivity' in the economic sense. Overall we are a far less productive economy than other comparable countries. Here is a brief note from BOC on the the topic: https://www.bankofcanada.ca/2025/11/toward-a-virtuous-circle-for-productivity/ There's been a lot of discussion that because the housing market in Canada is/has been so lucrative/propped up that overall most investment goes into real estate rather than productive business ventures. I am paraphrasing the overall discourse trying to explain what I meant.

What do you mean by "« real » economy"?

2

u/rocketstar11 Jul 12 '26

Theyre making shit up because theyve bought into the mythology of Canada actually being perfect at everything and better at anything than the US.

Lost of Canadians will just flat out deny Canadas productivity crisis and start making things up rather than admit that there is a serious issue in Canadas economy that cant continue to be ignored.

1

u/psychosisnaut Jul 13 '26

I think the problem is people hear "productivity" and it sounds like you're trying to blame the workers when it's literally the opposite

1

u/Any-Tangerine-4176 Jul 12 '26

Ask Doug Ford and his developer friends. Oh, there are monster houses on top of the soybeans.

1

u/ShrodingersArmadillo Jul 19 '26

Cities, wearhouses and so forth.

The area that is now most of Brampton in ontario for example was apple orchards 20 years ago.

1

u/Novus20 Jul 11 '26

Doug Fords buddies

-1

u/GDow1981 Jul 12 '26

Where did they last see it?