Canada's agricultural landscape, once dominated by small farms and plentiful livestock, is now characterized by larger operations that focus on crop production, new census numbers suggested Thursday.

Data from Statistics Canada's 2011 census of agriculture showed the country's farmers are consolidating their operations and shifting their efforts away from the cattle farming that was once the backbone of Canadian farming.

The number of total farms shrank 10.3 per cent since the last census release in 2006, continuing a downward trend that first surfaced in 1941. The number of farm operators also dropped 10.1 per cent over the period.

Data suggests, however, that the decline in overall numbers doesn't necessarily point to a downturn in total farming.

Although the number of farms slipped to 205,730 from 229.373 in the previous census, StatsCan says many smaller farms have been consolidated into larger operations over that five year stretch.

The total area of land being farmed slipped only four per cent to 160,155,748 acres, while the average farm size jumped seven per cent to 778 acres.

Alfons Weersink, professor of agriculture at the University of Guelph, says digging deeper into the census data reveals a sector that's in fairly robust health.

"The last several years have been good for most of agriculture," Weersink said in a telephone interview. "Profits have been up, prices have been increased quite significantly from the last census... There's been a significant boost up."

Weersink cites the growing number of commercial farms as evidence of the industry's strength. StatsCan says the number of farms reporting more than $1 million in gross farm receipts soared 31.2 per cent from 2006 levels. There was also a three per cent surge in the number of farms bringing in more than $500,000, which now make up 11.5 per cent of all farms in Canada.

Total gross farming receipts climbed four per cent to $51.1 billion, a fact Weersink partly attributes to high commodity and grain prices.

That same uptack partially accounts for the shift in farm production that took place over the past five years, he says.

Canada's farming industry was traditionally sustained in equal measure by grain and beef production, according to the last census. Now, StatsCan said grain and oilseed farms make up 30 per cent of the national total, up from 26.9 per cent, while beef farms tumbled from 26.3 per cent to 18.2 per cent.

Weersink says farmers have been adjusting their focus to capitalize on the strong crop market.

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Most Saskatchewan farmers are on the field following a much needed period of relatively dry weather this week.

Between 25 and 60 millimetres of rain fell last weekend across the province. The largest amount of precipitation was in the Saskatoon area, but southeast and east-central regions have the most saturated soil. Even though there is a sense of deja vu in the wettest areas, the overall situation is better than it was in 2011.

"Compared to this time last year, there has been a good deal of pre-seeding work done," says Elaine Moats, a Saskatchewan Agriculture crops specialist in Weyburn. "There has been a start with seeding, so people are still in a lot better shape than last year at this time."

Saskatchewan Agriculture's weekly crop report says five per cent of intended acres were planted as of Tuesday, May 8. The southwest was at 13 per cent, the southeast five per cent and the west-central region had two per cent of the crop in the ground. Cropland topsoil moisture across the province is rated as 35 per cent surplus, 64 per cent adequate and one per cent short.

With the exception of some peas, seeding has been slow to begin in the Saskatoon area. Laura Reiter farms in the Radisson area, about 60 kilometres northwest of the city.

"There are different years where we haven't started until the second week of May," Reiter says. "Once you get past the second week, it gets a little harder on the blood pressure."

Despite the delay, Reiter doess't have a problem with the rain to date, saying, "I'd much rather go around puddles than be seeding into dust."

Canola Council of Canada agronomy specialist Clint Jurke says the additional moisture means farmers growing the oilseed in a very tight rotation will have to evaluate their seeding rates.

"Seedling diseases will become a lot more prevalent, especially given the fact that we have some pretty wet soil conditions," he says. "If that is the case, growers should be factoring into their seeding rates to adjust for additional seedling mortality."

The other issue growers are dealing with is whether to go with a pre-seed burnoff or deal with the weeds later. Jurke says it's not an easy decision.

"In general, if they have a lot of winter annuals and perennials in the field, then going after those weeds should be a higher priority just because it will be very difficult to try controlling them in-crop. Certainly, they can reduce yield much more than if you have a three or four day seeding delay," Jurke says.

He adds planting may be the number one priority if the weeds are not too bad and can be sprayed later.

An early spring and good weather conditions had some Prince Edward Island potato growers out on their fields planting as early as April 21.

Greg Donald, general manager of the P.E.I. Potato Board, says those farmers already on the field were planting the early table varieties for the fresh market and for some processing markets. Most growers waited and went onto the fields over the past week.

Donald estimates that as of May 9, between five and 10 per cent of the crop had been planted. This has put Island growers about a week ahead of normal planting overall.

However, Donald says there is usually two to three weeks difference east to west on the Island, with eastern growers planting earliest.

"This year, there is not a lot of difference so in the east they are normal and maybe even a little behind; central they are normal and west they are early," he says.

In other crops, Donald says cereals are mostly planted and vegetable transplants are started.

"There's no oilseeds planted yet and the small grains and potatoes are just getting going."

In Nova Scotia, bud development on fruit trees was early this year by about an average of two weeks, with green tip being observed on April 15. Most years, says Bill Craig, a horticulture crops specialist with Agrapoint in Nova Scotia, it occurs the last week of April.

As a result of the early budding, unseasonal warm temperatures in April, followed by cooler temperatures, had fruit growers concerned about frost damage. Craig says he noticed damage to apple and sweet cherry bud in the central Annapolis Valley area in early May, while other reports saw damaged buds from the more northern part of the valley.

"Not all cultivars and orchards had damage, however the damage is more extensive than one would have thought given a low of -2.2 C," Craig says. "Given the deep brown colour of the pistils, it was felt that the freezing temperatures on April 30 caused the problem."

Craig says depending on the area, growers were seeing as much as 50 per cent of damage to flower buds, but that is not necessarily cause for concern.

"We still have good viable flower buds there, so if we get good weather -– no more frost -– and we get good pollination weather, the potential is there for a good crop," Craig says.

He does advise growers to check buds to determine if damage did occur and to what extent.

If there is damage, he says, growers with crop insurance will need to inform officials as soon as the damage is detected, but it's still too early to tell how much this damage will affect the crop, he says.

"We're in much better shape than what I'm hearing in Ontario, Michigan and New York where damage is more extreme," he says.

Craig also reports producers are seeing some insects, but so far there is nothing out of the ordinary with pests and disease.

"It has not been that wet, so disease is not an issue yet," he says.

Devastating weather-related losses of up to $100 million are forecasted for Ontario's fruit industry.

The province's agriculture minister was scheduled to tour part of the Niagara region fruit belt Thursday to observe the damage and discuss the impact with farmers, industry representatives and crop insurance officials.

The problem stems from record high temperatures in the winter that sparked extremely early blossoming, followed by more than a dozen frosts. A particularly severe frost occurred on the weekend when blossoms were abundant.

As a result, much of the $60 million apple crop has been lost in Niagara and in other fruit-growing regions in the province, such as Georgian Bay, Lake Erie's north shore and near Toronto.

As well, up to 30 per cent of Ontario's $48 million tender fruit crop is in jeopardy, including peaches, cherries, pears, plums and nectarines.

Some Ontario farmers say certain varieties such as Empire apples will be costly and available in very limited quantities, if at all.

"Higher prices are likely to continue over the next several years as farmers attempt to recoup losses from this year," says Jacob Pries of the Organic Council of Ontario.

Indeed, many of the expenses associated with growing apples will still be necessary, as pests are still an issue, even with little or no crop. Brandon Weber, farm manager at Filsinger's Organics in Ayton, Ont., says farmers who fail to control for pests this year will cause increased pest problems over the next years.

They'll still have to spend money and time on pest and fungus control, he says, even for trees with no apples.

This bout of unpredictable weather has thrown a new wrench into food price predictions. As last year drew to a close, University of Guelph researchers Sylvain Charlebois and Francis Tapon were predicting the 2012 overall price increase in food would be about two per cent.

However, Charlebois noted at the time, unpredictable heat, cold and rainfall continue to influence farming in ways never experienced in modern-era agriculture.

"If the weather co-operates, our predictions will be fine," he says, "but how can we know what Mother Nature will do?"

Farmers in Canada and the United States can now gain immediate access to Viterra commodity pricing for North America. The global agri-business launched the new business application for mobile phones earlier this week.

The myViterra mobile app provides a secure and simple mobile interface that can be customized for specific commodities and facility locations.

Recognizing that growers are increasingly accessing information on their mobile devices, Viterra developed the app to help them quickly find opportunities in the marketplace.

"The myViterra mobile app will provide them with up-to-the-minute information on current prices no matter where or when they choose to access information," says Kyle Jeworski, vice-president of grain merchandising and transportation.

The app is a free download at the App Store on iTunes Canada and iTunes USA, Blackberry App World, and through Google Play.

The discovery of traces of clubroot in Manitoba has raised concerns that this serious canola disease may be spreading eastward from Alberta.

Manitoba Agriculture, Food and Rural Initiatives recently announced that soil samples from two separate fields in 2011 contained some clubroot DNA. Its source is unknown.

The samples were taken during an annual canola disease survey by industry and government.

MAFRI officials are quick to say this doesn't necessarily mean the potentially devastating disease has arrived in Manitoba from Alberta, where it is spreading.

They also note the DNA in the two samples was at extremely low levels and did not represent the actual disease itself. Officially, Manitoba remains clubroot-free.

But the fact that the pathogen was detected at all means producers should be on guard for it, says Holly Derksen, a MAFRI field crops pathologist.

"Even though we have different soil types than Alberta, the potential for this disease is in Manitoba and therefore we need to be proactive rather than reactive," Derksen says.

MAFRI recommends proper equipment sanitization, especially removing soil from field machinery, as the most important way to prevent the spread of this soil-borne disease.

Clubroot is a disease of cruciferous crops (members of the mustard family), which includes broccoli, cabbage and rutabaga, as well as canola. It gets its name from swollen clusters on the roots, a classic symptom.

The first report of clubroot in a Western Canadian canola field occurred in 2003 near Edmonton. Since then it has spread to hundreds of fields in central and southern Alberta. Last year, a few cases were reported in western Saskatchewan.

The only known detection of clubroot on canola in Manitoba occurred in 2005 at a very low level.

Clubroot, once established, can severely damage canola crops. Derksen says according to a rule of thumb, yield losses to clubroot are about half the percentage of infected stems. For example, if 100 per cent of plants in a field are infected, producers can expect a 50 per cent yield loss. Infestations of 10 to 20 per cent can produce a five to 10 per cent loss.

The concern about clubroot comes as farmers prepare to seed their largest canola crop ever. Statistics Canada projects canola plantings could reach 20.4 million acres in 2012.

Unfortunately, the disease has a long life, Scientists say spores can survive in the soil for up to 20 years, although the half-life of resting spores is only four years.

Derksen said clubroot can be controlled through sanitation, proper crop rotation and the use of resistant varieties.

Manitoba producers want a new provincial farm organization formed to collect money for grain research after the current funding mechanism ends later this year.

Keystone Agricultural Producers is spearheading a search for a new Manitoba spring wheat and barley producer organization mandated to collect a checkoff for research and development.

Last month KAP held an industry stakeholder meeting to explore the idea. A resolution passed at a recent KAP general council meeting gives the executive authority to move forward, says president Doug Chorney.

Chorney stresses KAP is only steering the process and Manitoba producers themselves will decide on the new organization.

"We want this to be driven by farmers and not driven by KAP," he says.

Chorney says the goal is to find a different way to fund the Western Grains Research Foundation because of upcoming changes to the present system.

The Saskatoon-based WGRF is a producer-member organization that administers an optional deduction from grain deliveries to fund research for wheat, durum and barley breeding.

Currently, the levies are applied against a producer's Canadian Wheat Board final payment. But that will change when the Marketing Freedom for Grain Farmers Act comes into effect Aug. 1.

The federal government has promised transitional support while a new funding model is developed.

KAP feels a producer-owned commodity organization in each of the three Prairie provinces is best suited to collect the research checkoff, says Chorney.

A provincial commission with a checkoff program on barley already exists in Alberta. Chorney says a newly formed Alberta all-wheat commission will be ready to roll Aug. 1. Preliminary discussions about something similar are underway in Saskatchewan.

In Manitoba, the law requires producers to approve a new commodity group in a plebiscite before it can be formed. Provincial certification isn't likely to happen for another two years even if producers support the idea, says Chorney.

But it's important to start working immediately on a new funding model, he adds. The federal act includes provisions for only a temporary point-of-sale checkoff on wheat and barley. Transitional federal support will last five years at most, he adds.

Chorney says stakeholder groups will now go back to their respective boards to see what they want to do.

The WGRF in 2011 collected nearly $6.2 million in checkoff dollars for wheat and over $682,000 for barley. The foundation says it hopes to invest $23.5 million over the next five years in breeding programs at institutions across the Prairies.

The Canadian Food Inspection Agency has announced new import measures to protect Canadian livestock from the threat of the Schmallenberg virus, recently identified in some European herds.

Animals will now be required to test negative for the virus before their semen or embryos will be allowed into Canada from countries within the European Union. The restrictions cover bovine, bison, water buffalo and goat semen in addition to bovine and bison embryos.

The previously unknown virus was detected in late 2011 in ruminants, including cattle, sheep and goats, in several EU countries including Germany, the Netherlands, Belgium, the United Kingdom, France, Italy, Luxembourg and Spain. The provisional name of Schmallenberg relates to the location where it was first identified.

Symptoms observed in adult cattle include fever, diarrhea and reduced milk yield. In sheep, cattle and goats, the virus produces abortions, stillbirths and malformations of newborn animals, mainly lambs. Reported deformities include crooked necks and stiff joints. The majority were born dead while any live lambs with the infections did not survive.

Preliminary information suggests the virus is part of the Simbu serogroup of the Bunyaviridae family. Viruses of the serogroup are more commonly found in ruminants in Asia, Australia, Africa and the Middle East.

Transmission is through biting insects like midges and mosquitoes. Direct transmission from animal to animal is considered unlikely but vertical transmission from dam to newborn can occur.

Assessments by the European Centre for Disease Prevention and Control indicate it is unlikely the virus can cause disease in humans, but current evidence is not conclusive.

The CFIA says it will continue to monitor the situation and issue updates as required. Further information the situation in the European Union is at http://ec.europa.eu/food/animal/diseases/schmallenberg_virus/index_en.htm.

Last weekend, French and Greek voters initiated major changes to their respective governments.

These changes plunged the fragile Eurozone back into uncertainty, threatening to knock its German-led austerity drive for the continent at least somewhat off course, and threatening the bailout designed to save Athens.
 
The election defeat of pro-austerity supporters in those two countries will force German Chancellor Angela Merkel to redraw her tough approach to fixing the euro area's fiscal woes, or risk becoming increasingly isolated, despite the fact her government holds the purse strings.
 
The latest political reversals are another example of European countries where disillusioned voters have tossed out leaders or governing parties in less than two years, as the sovereign debt crisis escalated and fiscally challenged governments began slashing budgets. In every case, planned or executed austerity has inflicted heavy damage on already weakened economies, triggering recessions and driving up unemployment across the region to a 15 year high.
 
Not yet clear is the fate of the still-to-be-ratified European fiscal compact, championed by Merkel and requiring governments to balance their budgets or face stiff penalties.

Impact on farmers
A farmer here might question, "What has this got to do with me, or us?"

Well, perhaps more than you might think.

This unrest means equity markets here and in Europe are under pressure, so too are metals and energy markets, as speculative fund long liquidation again rears its ugly head. Ag markets have been relatively more immune so far, though losses this week in grain markets cannot be taken lightly.

That said, Chicago soybean and Winnipeg canola futures continue to hold support along their respective uptrending chart lines since lows were established back in December. A little more troubling, though, is the trend line support has been broken lately for Chicago Board of Trade soyoil, European Union rapeseed and Malaysian palm oil futures.

With so much yet to be decided in Europe, markets of all types and shapes are bound to witness increasingly volatile times ahead.

You can find plenty of global economic doomsday guys out there, and we can ignore them as simply preaching economic extremism, I suppose. But they sure can paint a scary picture.

Understanding the nature, pervasiveness and consequences of over-leveraged (too much debt) public and private finances seem an overwhelming task.

Two main tactics
However, there seems to be two dominant lines of reasoning at this time on how this global unwinding of debt-related problems will play out.

Route one involves the classic solution of inflating global economies to rise out of their financial slumps. That's the Keynesian approach.

Route two invokes a deflationary path of deteriorating or re-valuating financial assets sharply lower over time.

Neither route comes without pain, but route two is worst, involving significant financial dislocation.

Since the 2008 banking crisis, governments and central banks globally (led by the United States, the European Central Bank and the International Monetary Fund), have taken route one. They've attempted to inflate their respective economies out of their credit problems, using massive monetary injections into the banking system (creating money out of thin air) to grease the global economic wheels and restart economic growth. In the U.S., the term quantitative easing has been the catch-all term covering this process.

But only limited success has been achieved to date. Economic growth remains slow and stale in the U.S., while the EU seems to have slipped back into recession. And now, both regions are much deeper into debt. The economic cracks have become more evident these days in European societies such as Greece, Spain and Italy. North America may not be so far behind. 

So with interest rates already at or near zero and trillions of "new" dollars already flushed in the financial system, governments and central banks have fired off their best bullets with only limited success.

Inflating markets to work their way out of this massive global credit crisis does not seem to be working, only delaying the progressively harder political decisions which must eventually be made before sovereign default becomes the final and only remedy. The easy credit world of today is not sustainable.

The globe faces a period of credit reconciliation or deleveraging where access to credit becomes more difficult. Governments will need to employ very tough budgetary measures -- measures that prove very unpopular with the electorate. There is no other way, and it could be tough for those with the resolve to do what is right for the longer term health of their respective nations.

Resolution will reach far
The evolving problems and their ultimate resolution will reach into all industrial sectors and touch lives personally. Western Canadian agriculture will not be immune, I suspect.

For now, authorities will continue to promote taking the inflationary path. But resolution to the problem does not come from this course of action.

Ultimately, credit deleveraging will prompt a deflationary wave across global commodity markets. Grains and livestock prices would ultimately feel the pressure. When and how much so has yet to be determined. No one can answer such questions definitively.

I bring this to your attention simply as a caution to not focus your grain marketing solely on the fundamental issues of our individual ag commodities, as a means to estimate future price direction.

United States Department of Agriculture and Statistics Canada reports, future production and demand estimations -- all are important influences for our ag markets.

But there are bigger, macro-economic tides at work that may, in the end, be the ultimate drivers of market pricing. As such, they must be taken into account when we consider how we will market our ag production for the year ahead and beyond.

Mike Jubinville of Pro Farmer Canada offers information on commodity markets and marketing strategies. Call 204-654-4290 or visit www.pfcanada.com to find out more about his services.