The average farmer is a little older, there are more women farm operators and Saskatchewan has the highest rate of farm succession planning in the country.
The 2021 Census of Agriculture reports there were 34,128 farms in Saskatchewan with about 14 per cent larger than 3,520 acres. The number of farms declined by 1.1 per cent but direct comparisons between the Ag Census in 2016 and the one last year may be misleading because Statistics Canada has changed its definition of a farm.
You can view the number of farms in each size category in the chart below for both Saskatchewan and Alberta:
The total farmed area in Saskatchewan was just over 60.2 million acres and the average farm size is 1,766 acres.
Looking at demographics, 26,770 Saskatchewan farmers or 60.6 per cent are in the 55 and over age category. Just under 30 per cent or 13,065 are between the ages of 35 and 54, while 4,305 or 9.8 per cent are under the age of 35.
The number of female Saskatchewan farmer operators is up by about 800 between 2016 and 2021. It now stands at 12,010—or 27.2 percent of total farm operators. The percentage of farmers in Saskatchewan working off-farm stands at 43.6 percent.
As for the rate of technology use—Saskatchewan ranks number one in the country with 47.6 percent of farmers having auto-steer and 17.7 percent using G.I.S mapping.
On a national basis, there were 189,874 farms in the Canada—down 1.9 percent. The number of Canadian farm operators was down 3.5 per cent to 262,455.
The average age of a Canadian farmer is 56—up one year from the last census. Saskatchewan is just slightly under the national average.
Total farms area in Canada was 153.7 million acres, down 3.2 percent. Crops and beef operations account for about 83 per cent of total farm area.
There are more farms with higher sales in Canada. Those with sales greater than $1 million rose to 9.9 percent of farms, up from 7.2 percent in the last census. Farmers reporting at least $2 million in sales account for 51.5 percent of total farm operating review, up from 41.5 percent in 2016.
