Compare the yard and buildings outside your back door with that tired old stretch of Main Street in your nearby town. It’s obvious where you’d rather do business. Or is it?
It’s rarely wise to generalize in agriculture, so let me put this generalization down in print right away and we can move past it.
Canada’s farmers have money to invest.
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Not every farmer, of course. Different commodities have fared differently over the past year, different regions have had better or worse weather, different farms have different opportunities and restraints.
But by and large, Canada’s farmers have more money to invest, and those who don’t, either because of the buffeting they got in 2022 or because of the particular stage their farm is at, I hope soon they will too.
Canada has never seen anything quite like it, or like the implications of our farmers having business knowledge like never before.
Use your local small town as an example. Generations ago, its Main Street was crowded with locally owned stores, shops and businesses. Business skills abounded. Most importantly, so did the eye for opportunity that comes to those with skin in the game.
Today the number of businesses in town has sunk, similar in a way to the number of farmers. And many of those businesses are franchises, not true independents, which is something of a world apart.
Every town I’ve known always had a hotel in past or store owners or small manufacturers looking for the next chance and ready to act when they found it. They’re the type Karen Daynard talks about in her article, “Inspired,” from our December 2022 issue.
There are fewer with these skills in town today, and fewer too with the resources that come from having a successful business to feed off.
In the countryside, meanwhile, there are more capable farmers with more vision and more ability to jump.
Will this become a growth area for farmers? Will we see more farmers get involved in manufacturing, land development, apartments, possibly even retail? After all, we’re already seeing growth in farm vertical integration and in farmers owning more of the supply chain.
Partly, it’s an incentive question. Who wants to diversify outside of agriculture and risk diluting their focus on the farm? But then, growth is still an imperative, and we all know there can be real limits to expansion on most farms.
My guess is, some farms will add non-farm businesses, whether they’re vertically integrating, getting into value adding, or moving into non-farm business.
And most farms won’t.
There’s a reason why I say this now, though. Check out Leeann Minogue’s, “Be your own futurist,” column.
Leeann has six more columns to come, looking at future issues in specific sectors and at specific questions within them, all with a disciplined and scientific business approach.
I wonder, where will we think you should invest when you’ve read all six?
Are we getting it right? Let me know at [email protected].
