‘Waiting out the storm’ mentality seems to persist among Ontario farmers
- 2 days ago
- 5 min read
By Luke Edwards
Ongoing economic uncertainty is likely one of the main reasons farmers in Ontario are continuing to spend less on new machinery and other farm investments, and otherwise staying the course.
Results of the Ontario Federation of Agriculture’s third annual business confidence survey were released recently, and OFA economist Ben LeFort said there’s some cause for concern, though the province’s farming community remains resilient and relatively confident in their own operations. However, economic uncertainty, trade wars, and geopolitics continues to be a drag on Ontario farmers.
“I think we can read that across the board. There’s less investment, there’s lower confidence. More folks are saying ‘I’ll probably just stay the same,’” said OFA economist Ben LeFort.
“You take all those three things together and really what it paints a picture of is waiting out the storm to see what happens.”
The survey saw more than 850 farmers respond, sharing their insights on investments, confidence and plans to expand or contract. They also answered questions on what the top issues were and what they would like to see the federation to focus on.
LeFort said they received a good cross section of farm operations, with most commodity groups and regions represented, along with a good mix of income levels.
The survey ran from Dec. 1 to Jan. 16. Last year, the survey came out just as U.S. President Donald Trump’s tariff plans started making headlines.
“There was a huge amount of uncertainty at the time we ran last year’s survey,” LeFort said.
It looks like that uncertainty is remaining.
The percentage of farmers who reported investing in machinery has dropped each year of the survey, going from 48.4 per cent in 2024, to 44.5 per cent last year and down to 42.7 per cent this year.
“This certainly is a concerning trend,” LeFort said.
Investments in structures are also down from two years ago, but basically flat from last year.
For ag tech, investments rebounded slightly from last year’s survey, but at 13 per cent remains down from the 15.6 per cent mark for the first year of the survey.
Those who are investing in tech are mostly young - more than one quarter said they were under the age of 35 - and large. Farms that reported $500,000 or more in income made up more than 30 per cent of those investing in technology.
A lack of access to cell service is a huge barrier for technology adoption, LeFort said. Northern Ontario is far below the rest of the province in terms of adopting technology for their farm businesses, and they’re also far more likely to live in a digital desert with no signal, or a weak and unreliable signal.
“It has nothing to do with desire to adopt it, it has everything to do with the infrastructure and availability of the broadband that’s required to run these technologies,” he said.
Large farms are also getting larger, with the $500,000-plus category far more likely to be looking at expansion.
Overall, however, roughly three quarters of respondents said they’re neither planning to grow nor downsize.
“More and more of the members saying they’re basically staying the same,” LeFort said.
In each of the three years of the survey, LeFort noted an ongoing trend that farmers reported being more confident in their own business than in the sector as a whole. On both fronts, confidence ticked up from last year, but remains down from 2024. For the industry as a whole, 57.7 per cent expressed some level of confidence (up from 54.9 last year and down from 62.9 in the inaugural survey), while confidence in their own business hit 76.4 per cent (up from 74.6 per cent last year and down from 78.6 per cent in 2024).
“We see a persistent trend for farmers being a lot more confident in their own business than in the sector,” he said.
Younger farmers seemed more confident both with their own operations and the sector as a whole than their over-35 counterparts.
LeFort also noted an interesting split that saw Northern Ontario farmers more confident in the sector than those in the rest of the province, a number that’s been rising in each of the three surveys.
In terms of priorities, farmers once again placed taxes at the top of their list.
“For the third year in a row, reducing farm taxes not only was number one, but runs away with number one. It’s run away with number one each year we’ve done the survey, it’s not even remotely close,” LeFort said.
Just under 70 per cent of respondents said they want OFA working on getting farm taxes reduced. Specifically, farmers identified property tax as the main challenge by a large margin, LeFort said.
It’s something OFA has been working on for several years, with LeFort crediting local farmers in many municipalities for helping get their councils to lower the tax ratios for farms. However, he described it as mostly being in a holding pattern now, with the ongoing freeze of MPAC assessments.
Other policy priorities for government that farmers mentioned the most included pushing for more buy local, addressing energy costs, succession planning and interprovincial trade. Protecting the right of property was also top of mind for many farmers.
Outside of government policy, the survey found farmers are far and away more concerned about rising input costs than anything else. Other top issues included commodity prices and the cost of insurance.
“This has risen each of the three years we’ve done this. This has continued to rocket up the charts in terms of issues that members are telling us they’re worried about,” LeFort said.
Nearly half of respondents identified insurance costs as a top issue.
Drilling into the insurance issue, LeFort said they’ve also found a mismatch between what farmers think is covered under the plans, and what is actually covered when they try to make a claim.
Perhaps surprising to some, cost of insurance even topped trade and tariffs.
However, having rising input costs at the top wasn’t surprising, LeFort said. Between 2018 and 2024 Ontario farm total expenses after rebates increased 53.5 per cent to just under $21 billion.
“So it’s not too surprising, especially since COVID…that these rising costs are increasingly concerning to members,” he said.
LeFort plans to keep running the survey, and encouraged farmers to keep an eye out for when the next survey opens later this year.
”This is your chance to really tell us ‘these are the most important issues,’” he said.
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