The Rural Voice, 2000-05, Page 22The power of agriculture to
drive the economy was
demonstrated again when an
economic impact study for the
County of Perth was unveiled
recently.
With Stratford's world famous
Stratford Festival pumping tourist
dollars into the county's economy
and with the auto sector providing
the area with many well-paid
industrial jobs, agriculture still
accounts for 1 1,000 jobs, or 28.9 per
cent of all jobs in the county, the
study conducted by Harry Cummings
and Associates revealed.
The study goes beyond the farm
gate to look at the next level of
contribution of agriculture: those
companies that buy from agriculture
or sell to agriculture. The farm -
related businesses interviewed by
Cummings' team covered all aspects
of economic activity from plumbers,
lawyers, accountants and vets to
feedmills. However the estimates of
the impact of agriculture are
conservative because it, did not
include sectors that work with
agricultural products such as
manufacturers and retailers.
The Cummings team estimated
that for every dollar of farm gate
18 THE RURAL VOICE
FARMING
MEANS
JOBS
New study in Perth
County calculates the
power of agriculture in
the economy
sales, there is $1.52 generated in off -
farm sales. For every job on the farm,
there were 1.26 jobs off the farm that
came from doing business with
farmers.
All this comes despite the fact the
number. of farms continues to
decline. Between the 1986 and 1996
census, the number of farms in the
county dropoed from 2,927 to 2,832
yet farm gate sales soared from
$306.5 million in 1985 to $430
million in 1995 because agriculture
has become ever more productive,
Cummings said.
"There is a mistaken impression
that farming is no longer important
because there are fewer farmers,"
Cummings said. "This is not true.
There may be fewer farmers but they
produce more and more goods and
agriculture still plays a very
important role in rural Ontario."
Cummings, a Professor with the
University of Guelph's School of
Rural Planning and Development,
has plenty of experience with such
reports having made a specialty of
the process across Ontario since he
was commissioned by the Huron
County Federation of Agriculture
several years ago to do the first
study. Other studies have been done
in Lambton County and the five
counties of eastrrn Ontario.
"I'd,love to do the Huron study
again with the methodology we've
learned," he said.
Perth County's large livestock
sector makes it the fifth largest
county in the province in terms of
, agricultural output, even though it is
smaller in size than others.
Perth County Warden Dave
Shearer pointed out that Perth ranks
first in hog production and dairy
cattle and predicted that with the
explosion of construction of new
farm buildings in recent years, the
results of the upcoming 2000 census
would be much different than those
in the 1996 census.
Even so, Perth produced so many
agricultural products in 1996 that it
ranked ahead of any of the Atlantic
Provinces in terms of agricultural
output.
Dave Vandewall, a hog and
cashcrop farmer who co-chaired the
Committee for an Agriculture
Economic Impact Study in Perth
County, pointed out that "Every farm
driveway you pass imports or exports
thousands of dollars each year, if not
each day."
"It's big business. It's important