The Rural Voice, 1999-01, Page 20Projecting the trends ahead, what will
t has been going on for
generations so it's perhaps no
surprise that a look ahead to
farming in the year 2010 predicts the
big farms will become bigger and
more productive and the small
farmers will look for off -farm income
to pay the bills.
That's what Bob Humphries
forecastwhen he was asked to look
down the road at the future of
farming in Huron County more than
a decade in the future before he took
early retirement from his position as
Ag Rep for the county.
Humphries' research included
looking back at trends over the past
three decades and trying to project
ahead where agriculture will go. It's
part of a planning structure for future
services at the Clinton OMAFRA
office, says Dan Carlow, manager,
field services for the Clinton and
Stratford offices. The intent of the
study, says Carlow, was to reflect on
the past and see where those trends
could go in the future.
"Basically what we're doing is an
'environmental scan' of Huron
County," says Carlow. "I think we
need to recognize the trends and one
of the trends I see is (an increase in)
the pressures that exist upon
producers and we're trying to make
available resources to help them cope
with these times.
"From this document and others
we've put together, we're trying to
put together some priority areas,"
says Carlow. With OMAFRA having
fewer resources it has to set
16 THE RURAL VOICE
priorities, he says.
In looking at the changes
agriculture has come through,
Humphries quotes economists who
say there have been three
technological eras in farming. From
1920 to 1950, farms were
revolutionized by the mechanical era,
the coming of new machines that
changed the way farming was carried
out. From 1950 to 1980 it was the
evolution of farm chemicals, from
pesticides to chemical fertilizers, that
changed how farmers farmed.
From 1980 to the present
agriculture has been propelled by the
biotechnology and information
technology era.
The influence of these
technological changes is reflected in
Humphries' study of the changing
production in the county dating back
to 1971. Many of the same changes
will have been reflected elsewhere in
the province.
The flood of production from
dairy cows, for instance, is illustrated
in the fact that in 1996 there were
just over half as many dairy cattle in
Huron as there were in 1971 (17,884
to 34,324), yet the county's
producers were shipping seven per
cent more milk in 1996 than they
were in 1990. Over the period from
1990 to 1996, the number of milk
producers dropped 26 per cent.
Huron's position, along with
Perth, at the heart of the swine
industry is reflected in the fact the
number of sows kept on farms grew
from 19,920 in 1971 to 43,833 in
1996. Even in the 1990-1996 period,
the number of hogs marketed grew
18 per cent to 617,643 per year.
During the same period the number
of producers dropped 26.6 per cent.
"Bob has identified that pork has
expanded to be the number one
sector in the county," says Doug
Richards, acting Ag Rep. "We still
have a land base to expand."
The one commodity where there
are more producers today than in
1990 is in chicken production where
there were 134 premises in 1996
compared to 103 in 1990. Huron has
been moving steadily upward in its
position in chicken production,
increasing production by 13.2 per
cent from 1990 to 1997 and now
accounting for 11.4 per cent of the
province's production.
The growth of the size of
livestock farms is reflected in
the number of livestock units
per census farm, from 27.3 in 1961 to
57.2 in 1996. However fears of
concentration of livestock may be
allayed by Humphries' research
which shows that, because more
improved farmland has been coming
into the system, the number of
livestock units per improved acre of
land is still below what it was in
1981. There is both more improved
land and fewer units of livestock,
much of the drop coming because the
number of feeder cattle dropped from
102,834 in 1981 to just 51,560 in
1996.
Livestock units in 1996 were
about .31 per acre which may mean