Rising Demand for Housing Vanishing Farmland in Canada

The amount of agricultural land is becoming less and less due to the building of houses, roads, and infrastructure. Besides erasing the rural landscape of grazing cattle and red wooden barns, the loss of prime farmland could hit

BY Realty Plus
Published - Thursday, 08 Jul, 2021

Rising Demand for Housing Vanishing Farmland in Canada

The amount of agricultural land is becoming less and less due to the building of houses, roads, and infrastructure. Besides erasing the rural landscape of grazing cattle and red wooden barns, the loss of prime farmland could hit food production in one of the world’s biggest suppliers of wheat, pork and pulses, farm leaders said. The number of farmers is declining every year,” he said from his home in the Halton region, where rows of townhouses, malls and industrial parks have eaten into the rolling fields of crops and pasture. While Canada is the world’s second-biggest country and only has about 40 million people, most of its best arable land lies near big cities such as Toronto, where the COVID-19 pandemic has intensified demand for suburban homes. Toronto was already one of the West’s fastest-growing urban hubs, Joy said, but across Canada low interest rates are driving appetite for new housing, pushing prices up 38 per cent year-on-year in May, according to the Canadian Real Estate Association. The average Canadian home is now worth more than $688,000, the Ottawa-based group said. That is putting housing out of reach for many first-time buyers and inflating rental costs, analysts said, and could be accelerating the steady loss of farmland, too.