KEMPTVILLE - Don Scott was pleasantly surprised that agricultural employment in the latest Harry Cummings study area has remained consistent and that the decline in employment in the four-county area is considerably lower than the provincial average.
Scott, an executive member of the Grenville Federation of Agriculture and one of the movers behind the University of Guelph’s study on the impact of agriculture in the four-county area, said that with the number of operators who have sold out in the past 15 to 20 years, he was surprised to see that farm and farm-related jobs in the study area dropped by only 1.6 per cent between 1991 and 1996.
"I’d hoped Grenville would have had larger numbers, but with the amount of marginal land we have in the county I guess we’re doing as good a job as can be expected," he said.
The study shows that while agricultural jobs suffered a slight decline in the study area, Frontenac and Grenville experienced an increase in employment and that farmgate sales in the study area increased 12 per cent between 1991 and 1996 to $183-million. Combined with agriculture-related businesses and retail and social infrastructures, agriculture contributes $534-million a year to the economy of the four counties. It directly and indirectly employs 11,851, eight per cent of the region’s workforce.
Scott said farmers can make use of the study’s findings when approaching their councils on issues like variances and permits, and federations will find it a valuable lobbying tool when pushing for the interests of their industry.
"It will help us maintain our profile and the perception of the study is what we make it," Scott said.
One of the study’s purposes was to correct the mistaken perception that agriculture is in decline across the province and that municipalities and their economic development agencies would be better off chasing down industrial and high tech jobs.
Cummings and his research team state that far being a moribund industry, agriculture increased its sales across the province from $5.5-billion in 1991 to $7.8-billion between 1991 and 1996, an annual growth rate of 3.5 per cent.
Scott agreed with the study’s basic premise, telling The AgriNews that some municipalities "may be chasing after bags of money that are already here if you look to find them".
Grenville has experienced a dramatic decline in its number of dairy farms, dropping a full 40 per cent, but although dairy is a major generator of farmgate dollars, the county maintains the highest per acre farmgate sales in the area.
"It shows that the farms in Grenville have not gone dormant and that there has been a shift to cash crops."
Scott runs a beef and cash crop operation just west of Kemptville in North Grenville, the municipality with the highest growth rate of any in the study area, whose population balloon 24 per cent between 1991 and 1996.
During his presentation June 29 Cummings made note of the faster growth of populations in rural areas than their urban counterparts in the study area, warning that farmers and their new residential neighbours are going to have to find ways of living in peace as their land uses compete with each other.
Although he hasn’t experienced any problems with his new neighbours Scott sees it as an issue that may have to be addressed.
From the Archives:
AgriFocus, July 2000
