• 94.3% if Chatham-Kent has land inventory classes 1, 2, or 3.  10.2% is land class 1 which has no significant limitations.  Land inventory classes 4 or greater have severe crop limitations.[i]

• This region of Ontario receives the greatest number of crop growing heat units with a large percentage of the area receiving 3,300 – 3,500.  In comparison, the Niagara region only receives 3,100 – 3,300 heat units.[i]

• Chatham-Kent has 552,402 acres of farmland of which 93.2% is used by crops.[i]

• In 1935 the average Canadian farm produced enough food for 11 people; by the year 2001, this figure was above 120.[ii]

• In 1921 there were 711,000 farms in Canada but only 43,0000 of these farms had tractors!  In 1996, there were 711,000 tractors but only 246,000 farms – nearly three tractors per farm! [ii]

• If all of Canada’s wheat (harvested in one year) was used to make loaves of bread, we could make 10 loaves for every man, woman and child on the surface of the Earth. [ii] 

• A typical bushel of corn weighs 56 pounds/25.4 kilograms and contains 72,800 kernels.  Most of the weight is the starch, oil, protein and fibre, with some natural moisture.

• Over the five-year period between 1995 and 2000, the prices farmers received for their products declined by 4.6%, while prices they paid for expenses such as fertilizer and fuel increased by 10%. Farmers, squeezed by increasing costs and declining value of many of the products they sold, had to increase farm production to keep the ratio of expenses-to-receipts favourable.[iii]

• Between 1996 and 2001, the number of farms declined by at least 10% in all provinces, except for Alberta and British Columbia, which had slower rates of decline. The decrease represents 29,625 fewer farms across Canada since 1996.[iii]
  

[i] Agricultural Economic Impact and Development Study: for Chatham-Kent.  Aug. 2002

[ii] The Challenge of Change.  The Canadian Agriculture and Food Industry

[iii] Statistics Canada 2001 Agriculture Census