Examining our Canadian land values

Buy land. They ain’t making any more of the stuff. That’s the famous sentiment from the late American comedian/humorist Will Rogers. As time goes on, the truth of those statements seems to deepen. But perhaps we could take that thought one step further. Support a family farm which is producing food; they aren’t making any more of those, either.
Some of the facts may be elusive, but they are there if we pay attention. The number of family farms continues to decline. Between 1951 and 2006, the number of family farms in Quebec declined by 77 per cent, according to statistics on the Ontario Ministry of Agriculture, Food and Rural Affairs website. In Ontario, the number of family farms declined by 62 per cent during the same time period. But in the 10 years between 1996 and 2006, total farm acreage has stayed about the same.
Land is becoming more valuable, even if we aren’t using it to grow food. While Alberta’s agricultural land values lead the way with an increase of 6.4 per cent in the last six months,  farmland in Quebec and Ontario has seen modest increases in the 1.2 (Quebec) to 2.7 (Ontario) range.
Urban buyers relocating to rural markets and the conversion of farmland to developments has affected land values in some parts of Eastern Ontario and Western Quebec. Contingent on residential or recreational development projects, land in hitherto-remote areas can suddenly become a desireable investment.
In this region, we have become accustomed to seeing limited housing developments on farmland. What we have seen in our region is nothing compared to the transformation of the land on the outskirts of Ottawa and Montreal. Will such growth occur in our region? It is likely, even though some experts say that developers cannot continue to build in rural areas that are increasingly distant from existing infrastructure.
But back to the food we eat. Increasingly, our grocery dollars are being spent on imported foods. In the past four decades, Canadian imports of red meats have increased by 600 per cent, according to one newspaper columnist. While import figures vary within agri-food categories, Canada exported a total of $19.9 billion in agri-food products, while we imported $16.7 billion in agri-food products in 2008. Our exports were delivered to 304 million Americans; U.S. agri-food products were delivered to 33 million Canadians.
Former CIBC chief economist Jeff Rubin participated in a discussion on cbc.ca in May of this year about his new book, “Why Your World is About to Get a Whole Lot Smaller: Oil and the End of Globalization.”
While making the link between the latest recession and oil prices, the basic premise of the book is that triple-digit oil prices will reverse globalization (distance costs money) and lead to the reemergence of local economies where we make our own steel and grow our own food.
All the increases in world food production over the last decade have been because of rising yields per acre; the actual amount of land under cultivation has not grown and may actually be shrinking given global warming. The key factor behind ever-rising crop yields is ever-increasing fertilizer use.
But guess where fertilizer comes from? Oil. There is not a sector in the economy that is more energy-intensive than today’s agricutlural sector.
Not only will the cost of commuting make living in the outer suburbs untenable but the rising cost of food will encourage their (the suburbs’) reconversion back into the farmland that they were only 20 or 30 years ago. Nature taking back the suburbs will be the point of intersection of plummeting suburban real estate values and soaring food prices.
Let us hope we have time we shift our priorities.