“Passion Alone Is Not Sufficient”: What Do We Know About Young Farmers in Canada?

In 2016, Canada’s 271,935 farm operators represented less than 0.8 per cent of the Canadian population (Statistics Canada 2017a). This reflects a loss of close to 120,000 farmers over the past 25 years as Canadian livelihoods continue to shift away from agriculture (about 1.4 per cent of the population farmed in 1991). Considering that less than 10 per cent of Canadian farmers are under the age of 35, it is hard to imagine these numbers rebounding anytime in the near future (Statistics Canada 2017a). Clearly, Canadian farming faces a generational challenge (Qualman et al. 2018). However, despite these generational challenges, there has been little research that focuses specifically on young farmers in Canada and their experiences in becoming “successful” farmers. Therefore, the purpose of this chapter is to provide an overview of the information available on Canadian young farmers. This overview references existing research from scholarly literature and government statistics. This is done to offer an understanding of the context within which Canada’s young farmers are embedded. A young person’s desire to farm is partly shaped by but also shapes their experiences in becoming and being a young farmer. This overview helps inform the discussion in the next two chapters that are based upon interviews with young farmers in our two case study provinces: Ontario and Manitoba.