Tuesday, August 14, 2012

Guelph launches Fare Share



The University of Guelph has launched a new online magazine, Fare Share, to highlight faculty and student research and opinions about agriculture policy.

Alan Ker, chairman of the Department of Food, Agriculture and Resource Economics, says “in this bi-yearly newsletter, you’ll find out facts and trends in Ontario agriculture.”

Alfons Weersink
In the initial issue, Alfons Weersink and Kenneth Poon provide a much different view of the most recent census on agriculture, detailing that the number of commercial-scale farms increased by 2.5 per cent, not the media’s approach which highlighted the decline in the total number of farms.

“The story thus far — the number of farms is falling and a significant portion are so small as to not even be considered a farm for tax purposes — seems to support the belief that agriculture is a dying profession,” they write. “But let’s look deeper . . .” to find that 46,000 farms had revenues of more than $250,000.

If expenses take 80 per cent, that leaves $50,000 per year for those farm families.

And the number of these farms has increased by 2.5 per cent since the previous census four years earlier.

There are other articles about basis for corn and soybeans and about whether to sell or store at harvest time.

The website is at fare.uoguelph.ca .