Mega farm talk

I spent yesterday standing around in the mud at a farm auction sale and had the opportunity to talk with a number of producers. It’s interesting how many grain farmers are wondering about farm structure and farm size and how the future is going to unfold. Five thousand acres used to be a big farm, but now there are many operations of 10,000 or even 20,000 acres. Is that the way of the future? Is the small to medium sized grain farm doomed? Are more outside corporate interests going to continue jumping into production agriculture? While the industry is moving rapidly to much larger operations, there were reportedly about 3,000 people at this big farm auction south of Regina with another 400 people viewing and bidding off the Internet. As is the case at most auctions, some pieces of equipment went surprisingly high and others seemed to be on the low side, but there was a market for all the equipment from the large to the small. Most of the equipment was at least a few years old so this may not have been a sale of interest for really big farm operations who want the newest and the biggest equipment. Sales like this one show that while the industry is changing, there are still lots of efficient and profitable enterprises that aren’t mega farms. I’m Kevin Hursh.

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Kevin Hursh, PAg, CAC