Agriculture More Than Ever launched the event in 2017
Farmers and members of Canada’s ag community took to social media Feb. 11 to celebrate Canada’s Agriculture Day (#CdnAgDay).
“Thank you to the farmers, processors, truck drivers, & retailers who help feed Canadians & the world. Let’s raise a fork to the food we love & the hardworking people who produce it!” Jenn Schmidt-Rempel, a member of Lethbridge City Council, wrote on X.
Agriculture More Than Ever launched #CdnAgDay in 2017 to recognize the work Canadian farmers and the greater agri-food community put in to producing healthy, high-quality foods, while also supporting the Canadian economy.
And Canadians have a lot to be proud of when it comes to agriculture.
For instance:
- Canada is the world’s 8th largest exporter of agri-food and other products, exporting to more than 200 countries in 2023 and worth about $99.1 billion.
- Approximately one of every nine jobs in Canada is related to agriculture.
- Canada is the world’s largest producer of maple syrup, accounting for more than 70 per cent of global supply.
- Canadian farmers produced food on 153,681,771 acres in 2021 – that’s larger than the total area of Ukraine.
- Canadian producers grew crops on 93,595,208 acres in 2021- that’s larger than the total area of Norway.
Canada is also the world’s largest producer and exporter of canola.
In 2023, exports of canola seed, oil, and meal, reached close to $16 billion. That year, Saskatchewan was the world’s leading exporter of canola.
Canada should be among the top nations when it comes to canola since Canadians invented the crop.
In the 1970s, Canadian researchers Keith Downey and Baldur Stefansson bred canola from two rapeseed cultivars (B. napus from Argentina and B. rapa from Poland) at the University of Manitoba after identifying a need for a locally grown, healthy cooking oil.
The word “canola” comes from the first three letters of Canada, with the o, l, and a standing for “oil, low, acid.”
The first variety, Tower, was released in 1974.
“The low glucosinolate content of “TOWER” represents a very significant improvement in the quality of rapeseed meal as a feed protein supplement,” the Rapeseed Digest said in March 1974.
At the time, J.J. Banfield, the president of the Rapeseed Association of Canada, estimated Canada could use 150 million bushels by 1978 for domestic and foreign buyers.
Canadians are also responsible for inventing other ag products.
Charles Saunders crossed Red Fife and Hard Red Calcutta wheat in 1904 in Ottawa to create the Marquis variety.
In 1911, Canadian Pacific Railway offered a prize of $1,000 in gold for the best wheat variety in Canada. Marquis won that award.
And during the First World War, Marquis made up 90 per cent of the wheat shipped from Canada to France.
People who enjoy Jubilee or Spartan apples also have a Canadian to thank.
In 1926, Richard Claxton crossed McIntosh and Grimes Golden apples to come up with the Jubilee.
“The flavour is sweet, like its McIntosh parent it is crispy only while just picked. Skin is flushed red over greenish yellow,” an industry website says.
About 10 years later, Claxton developed the Spartan.
Spartan is considered a good all-purpose apple. It has a bright-red blush and can have background patches of greens and yellows.
Lacombe pigs get their name from where they were first bred – Lacombe, Alta.
The Lacombe is the first strain of livestock developed in Canada. It’s a hybrid of Landrace, Berkshire and Chester White breeds.
Researchers at the Canadian Department of Agriculture Research Station in Lacombe in 1947 wanted to find a pig that could cross with the Yorkshire, the dominant breed in Canada at the time.
The breeding program took a total of 12 years and included 258 sires and 840 dams.
Lacombe boars were released to the public in 1957 and quickly became popular.
Today, Lacombe pigs are considered critically endangered in Canada.
Canadian ag innovations go beyond the farm gate too.
The cardboard egg cartons at the grocery store? From the mind of a Canadian.
In 1911, a B.C. newspaper editor named Joseph Coyle invented the egg carton to settle a dispute between a local farmer named Gabriel LaCroix and a hotel owner over the farmer’s eggs being broken upon delivery.
Coyle first produced them by hand using newspaper, but when demand increased, he invented a machine to mass produce the cartons.
While browsing at the grocery store, shoppers may come to find other products that got their starts in Canada.
Some examples include:
- Peanut butter – Marcellus Edson, a Quebec chemist, patented a way to make peanut paste in 1884.
- Ginger beef – Alberta chef George Wong is credited with inventing the dish in the 1970s at the Silver Inn in Calgary.
- California roll – B.C. chef Hidekazu Tojo is considered the creator of the dish, which gets its name from the use of crab and avocado.
- Caesars – In 1969, a bartender at the Calgary Inn (now the Westin) named Walter Chell created the drink to celebrate the opening of a new Italian restaurant. He took inspiration from spaghetti alle vongole, which is made with clams.
- Peameal bacon – Toronto, Ont. pork packer William Davies is credited with inventing this pork product. He sent a side of pork to relatives in England and packed it in ground yellow peas to help preserve the pork.
Members of the Canadian ag sector make their mark away from the farm too.
Sask. farmer Todd Lewis, for example, is one of Canada’s newest senators. Mary Robinson, a P.E.I. farmer and former president of the Canadian Federation of Agriculture, received a Senate appointment in 2024.
Another P.E.I. farmer, Lawrence MacAulay, is the current federal minister of agriculture.
And Gerry Ritz, a former federal ag minister, worked on his family’s Saskatchewan farm.
Other people representing ag in different ways include:
- Francis Sache, a dairy farmer from Rosedale, B.C., and Eric Ferguson, a producer from Sunderland Ont., represented Canada at the 2018 World Ploughing Championships in Germany.
- Lesley Kelley and Kim Keller, two Saskatchewan farmers, helped co-found Do More Ag.
- In 2022, Maddison Pearman, who grew up on her family’s Alberta farm, represented Canada at the Beijing Winter Olympics in speedskating.
- Also in the 2022 games, Kristen Bujnowski, from her family’s tobacco and ginseng farm in Mount Brydges, Ont., wore the maple leaf in bobsleigh.
- At those same Olympics, Ella Shelton, who grew up on her family’s farm in Ingersoll, Ont., won a gold medal with the women’s hockey team.
- On Jan. 1, 2024, Shelton scored the first ever goal in the Professional Women’s Hockey League (PWHL).
- Egg Farmers of Canada has been involved with Project Canaan in Eswatini for about a decade. This initiative includes a 2,500-acre orphanage and an egg farm.
- Country artists like Corb Lund, George Fox, and Marilyn Faye Parney, all grew up on their family farms.
- And in 2019, filmmaker Dylan Sher launched his documentary, Before the Plate, which follows the journey of a single meal, taking each ingredient back to the farm it originated from.