Survey shows Ontario farmers confident in future

Despite concerns about inflation, high interest rates, tax increases and geopolitical conflicts, the majority of Ontario farmers remain optimistic for the future.

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In its first ever business confidence survey, the Ontario Federation of Agriculture (OFA) asked its membership about issues concerning them, and what OFA advocacy efforts should focus on.

The survey took place in early December 2023, with 832 respondents. OFA Senior Farm Policy Analyst Ben Lefort presented the results at OFA’s research update March 26.

Lefort said he was happy with the number of respondents, who represented every county, with most commodities represented and balanced between small and larger farm incomes.

The majority of respondents indicated they took a pause on expansion projects, business growth, new technology investments, and land and equipment purchases in 2023. Nearly 70 per cent of respondents said they intended to keep their business the same size in 2024.

Fifteen per cent of respondents said they made investments to increase on-farm efficiencies. Probing deeper, these respondents were asked if they used an efficiency rebate or grant program, and Lefort said programs had “limited uptake” and this was something the OFA was interested in monitoring in future years.

The OFA plans to conduct the survey annually.

When asked about their degree of confidence in the outlook for Ontario’s farm sector in 2024, two-thirds of respondents said they had some degree of confidence or weren’t confident in the sector. Lefort said that interestingly, farmers in northern Ontario were more optimistic, with 30 per cent saying they were very confident.

However, when asked about the future of their individual operations, farmers across the province were more optimistic, with 78.5 per cent of respondents indicating they are somewhat to extremely confident.

The top two issues all farmers agreed would be their biggest challenge in 2024 are high input costs and high interest rates. A growing tax burden ranked third for farmers in southern and eastern Ontario, while insurance costs ranked third for those in the north.

As for the top three policy issues farmers want advocated by OFA, 76 per cent of farmers province-wide said tax burden was the top policy issue, although the survey didn’t differentiate between the carbon tax and other taxation, said Lehort.

Farmers identified rising energy costs as the second most important priority item, with those in the southern areas ranking improving rural health care and encouraging more local food consumption as third on their list. The third top policy priority for northern Ontario farmers is compensation for crop damage.

In a news release sharing survey results, the OFA said it would be addressing these issues during its annual advocacy day April 17 at Queen’s Park.