00:00:00.000but as you get into rural canada it seems to me that we are starting to be at a loss that is
00:00:07.360we're up against an aging farm pot farming population we just pointed out that there's
00:00:13.920uh 66 percent of them don't really have plans to pass it along
00:00:17.760no that means that we could be losing our food in canada
00:00:22.560all right thanks for joining us this is tplmedia.ca don't forget you might have the local
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00:00:45.240in your community today we're going to talk a little bit about the agri world here in canada
00:00:51.440on occasion i ask our very own paul micucci paul tell me a story explain something to me
00:00:57.480today's one of those moments paul thanks so much for doing this thanks mike uh recently as we are
00:01:03.380traveling the country by the way keep up with us follow us on all the socials and you'll make your
00:01:07.960way across canada with us uh you by the time this is airing you guys are already in the east coast
00:01:13.720yeah looking forward to it mike but this is uh something that i'm bringing back actually from
00:01:18.440west coast and i think that you can give me some insight because as we started to talk about this
00:01:23.240i was like wait wait we got a show oh yeah out west i started seeing billboards encouraging
00:01:28.440people to get into farming yeah there's podcasts out there that feature women getting into farming
00:01:33.720as entrepreneurs there's a huge push to develop farming in canada and it actually made me worry a
00:01:41.160little bit are we on decline here in canada when it comes to farming oh yeah of course we are for
00:01:47.160decades and we've known it mike this isn't something that just crept up on us we've known
00:01:52.600it for for many decades that people were leaving the farms they're going to the cities yeah the
00:01:58.280biggest issue right now if you own a farm is what do you do with it when you retire yeah this is a
00:02:04.520crazy stat yeah 66 of uh farm producers do not have a succession plan in place leaving the future
00:02:12.440farmland kind of up in the air yeah the kids don't want to farm you know you're driving along and you
00:02:17.880see that kind of uh decrepit rundown farmhouse that's a property that's been passed along and
00:02:24.760the kids didn't want to come back right so that house just fell apart it's sitting there and
00:02:29.080they're leaving it as development land that probably they'll never be able to use in their
00:02:34.920lifetime they're playing paying property taxes on it they've probably already leveraged it into the
00:02:39.400things they want to do financially in their life it's it's sitting there as just an asset yeah but
00:02:44.920the interesting part is those those assets that are sitting in their life are now uh
00:02:51.880the their assets that they have in the cities are devaluating and the assets in the country are
00:02:58.120appreciating so it's an interesting place to be it's switched right for years years and years
00:03:03.560uh you know when i was involved in the farming world uh you know it was
00:03:09.400a couple thousand for an acre it varied about how good the acreage was you were getting and what
00:03:14.120the farmland was but it was fairly reasonable to get into it it wasn't a backbreaker to buy a farm
00:03:20.120uh start to the issue really was covering your property tax making sure you got the tax breaks
00:03:26.440by farming it whether you're a hobby hobby farmer or not whether you're a full-time farmer that was
00:03:31.640something to look at but you know that's really all the things you're worried about but but as i
00:03:37.560got into it i'd meet people and and uh that were farming around me and they were usually in their
00:03:43.80050s 60s 70s 80s they were quite they're older gentlemen and ladies really happy really uh
00:03:51.160good neighbors and nice to deal with they've enjoyed being farmers they loved it they had a
00:03:55.960good community lived in small towns they didn't have this all the stresses we we have living in
00:04:00.600the city with traffic but but you know they didn't have really anyone coming back to pass them on to
00:04:05.800and so so you know as time went on uh it became less and less and you saw less equipment less
00:04:11.880farming less dealerships you know that john deere dealership that was on every corner
00:04:16.680started to disappear um and for quite quite some time so i thought mike here's the interesting
00:04:23.080thing when i started to see farming have a little bit of a resurgence i thought it was
00:04:29.560new immigrants coming back to farm yeah i'm seeing this like there's in my neighborhood for example
00:04:35.240there's a couple of seek farms like they you know they even say you know seek firm and i think that's
00:04:41.080because they you know they want to promote to their community that they're there farming but
00:04:45.240there's a lot of uh immigrant farmers in my neighborhood i made the same assumption yeah
00:04:51.080but then when i got into the show so then i started to dive into the show and i'm looking
00:04:55.240uh i'm thinking to myself okay who's buying up farms so i go and start to look at the real
00:05:01.880estate pages and i start to take a look at who's buying farms it turns out it's funds and companies
00:05:09.000and they're buying massive amount of acreage so i'm thinking myself okay um and it's it's it's
00:05:15.000u.s uh investors it's canadian investors it's uh new canadian investors but they're not buying like
00:05:21.560one or two farms like i thought like to your point you know indian family comes from india
00:05:27.080they've been farming all their life they decide to buy 200 acres of farm we're going to get into
00:05:31.320farming here in canada it's a natural progression yeah no no well to an extent but it's a it's
00:05:37.240it's done very differently than i thought and haven't been involved in and farm communities
00:05:42.480for years um so i had to refresh kind of who was doing what but really what it is now it's big
00:05:48.640funds that come in and they look at it like a hedge against inflation um they want to diversify
00:05:55.260their assets their portfolios and they basically are tired of putting all their eggs in commercial
00:06:01.240real estate a show we just did previously where we looked at logistics and trucking and uh
00:06:07.480containers and shipping it's a precarious commercial market right now it is and they
00:06:11.800don't want all their eggs in that basket so they've got into as a kind of a hedge or a financial
00:06:16.440instrument they've got into the farmland acquisition mode um because they can diversify
00:06:21.560their portfolio and they're looking at it you know uh they're looking at it very uh well
00:06:27.240organically i'll use but theoretically um they're using it very they're saying land is a limited
00:06:33.800supply right so make it anymore god ain't making any more so come to canada you pick up a lot of
00:06:40.520land the population continues to grow uh an argument i don't know in canada it has but that's
00:06:47.560been for uh immigration purposes our birth rates have been horrifically bad so i don't know if
00:06:53.880that's the greatest assumption but they make it food demand remains relatively stable okay so i
00:06:59.480think that's probably a good assumption and farmland well farmland has it's historically
00:07:05.240appreciated so and it continues to appreciate and you know i'm i was looking at some properties uh
00:07:10.760as we're getting ready for the show my wife and i you know she says let's get into farming i'm like
00:07:15.000well let's look at what farming costs right and as we're going through she's you know 30 000 an acre
00:07:21.08040 even as high as a hundred and something thousand an acre um whereas when i was involved
00:07:27.240in it it was actually like i said thousand per acre right not yeah you know three thousand was
00:07:32.040kind of the max you paid per acre that was kind of the rule of thumb where we lived um but now
00:07:37.240you know those properties are going out at 40 50 60 000 an acre but in in rural canada where farming
00:07:44.360is a big thing uh the price per acre i think is based a lot on the yield and not so much on the
00:07:50.440The real estate value, which I think just outside of the GTA here in Toronto or outside of the Calgary, greater Calgary area, for example, might be a little bit pricier.
00:08:00.280You know, fancy ranches and things like that.
00:08:02.400You know, hobby farms, I should point out.
00:08:04.980But as you get into rural Canada, it seems to me that we are starting to be at a loss.
00:08:11.820That is, we're up against an aging farming population.
00:08:16.200we just pointed out that there's uh 66 of them don't really have plans to pass it along
00:08:22.620no that means that we could be losing our food in canada yeah which is a major deal for us
00:08:30.820yeah a component of it and i think you know some people who are savvy and these are you know
00:08:35.720interesting you look at the traditional families uh the irving family for example you know potato
00:08:41.700family uh they've got into it big time the nielsen family uh got into it in western canada
00:08:49.760um and then robert angelic uh another canadian right he's actually done a huge purchase of
00:08:56.800farmland i saw that yeah and then you know you have uh other institutions like bonney field
00:09:02.340got into it big time the monette farms got into it so they've really decided to buy up a lot of
00:09:08.500property and i i started looking and i'm thinking okay so we see a lot of canadians and some non
00:09:13.980canadians um buying just property because they can buy acres and acres and acres of it rich u.s
00:09:20.780uh billionaires have come in and bought property uh it seems to cause a little bit of ripple you
00:09:26.240look online there's not happy people about that but you know they're doing it for estates right
00:09:31.540so that's a whole different thing but i went and i said okay is there is there any case
00:09:37.940or information available about Canadians going to the U.S.