A controversial proposal to allow up to three severances off an Ontario farm property will be walked back, according to a letter sent to Ontario farm groups by Municipal Affairs and Housing Minister, Steve Clark. The decision comes after several farm groups, led by the Ontario Federation of Agriculture, lobbied the government to drop the… Read More

Fourteen of Ontario’s agriculture organizations are collectively asking the provincial government to pause forward momentum of the proposed Bill 97 and the Proposed Provincial Planning Statement. “We stand in strong opposition to the 3 lot severances per farm parcel proposed in prime agricultural areas as well as other measures that weaken local farmland protection. We… Read More

Tucked into the Ontario Progressive Conservatives’ Bill 97 is a proposed change to severance allowances of farmland that the Ontario Federation of Agriculture (OFA) says could make siting of livestock farms much more difficulty. What’s more, the bill carves out increased power for Ministerial Zoning Orders in the name of housing; however, Peggy Brekveld, president… Read More

Under the guise of solving the housing crisis, Ontario’s premier Doug Ford is moving to develop over 7,000 acres of prime agriculture land in the province’s Greenbelt around the city of Toronto. In exchange, the Ford government says it will set aside over 9,000 acres…somewhere else. MPP for Temiskaming-Cochrane, John Vanthof says the premier’s plan… Read More

Land prices have officially reached a new high in the United States. According to DreamDirt Auctioneers, land in southeastern Nebraska sold on October 27, 2022 for US$27,400 per acre. This record-breaking price had two tracts; 116.07 acres for $27,400/acre, and 163.07 acres for $14,400. If you do the math, that totals to around $5.5 million… Read More

An average increase of 8.1 per cent in the price of farmland in early 2022 in and of itself isn’t necessarily outlandish — but some of the provincial averages leading up to that number are rather mind-blowing. Year-over-year growth in Ontario topped 27 per cent, Manitoba is averaging 13.6 per cent growth, and Saskatchewan land… Read More

When Farm Credit Canada (FCC) released its first-half of 2022 farmland values report earlier this week, reaction was somewhat mixed, ranging from “Well, of course prices are still strong!” to “This kind of growth is absurd given current conditions.” As J.P. Gervais, senior economist with FCC explains, it’s important to look at the 8.1 per… Read More

A mid-year review of farmland values by Farm Credit Canada (FCC) suggests climbing interest rates and poor growing conditions in 2021 have done little to temper demand for Canadian farmland. “Strong farm cash receipts, buoyed by robust commodity prices, have managed to quell some of the profitability challenges from higher interest rates and farm input… Read More

Consolidation is a word that has been floating around the cattle industry recently; however, the term is also gaining legs in the world of agricultural real estate. June Dako and Ray Nordin, real estate agents with ReMax Bridge City Realty, say that they’ve seen a fairly significant decline in available parcels for sale over the… Read More

The 2021 average increase in farmland values isn’t entirely surprising, says J.P. Gervais, chief economist for Farm Credit Canada (FCC), but the magnitude of the increase certainly is. With a weighted average of 8.3 per cent on the year, the significant weather events of the year — the extreme drought for the Prairies and parts of… Read More

According to Farm Credit Canada’s Farmland Values Report, Canadian farmland increased in value by 5.4 per cent in 2020 and 8.3 per cent in 2021, an entire year under pandemic conditions and during an extreme drought for Western Canada. The largest increases were in Ontario (22.2 per cent) and British Columbia (18.1 per cent), followed… Read More

 

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