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More Farm Income Coming from Off-Farm Sources

The average total income of Canadian farm families declined slightly in 2019, while that proportion of income earned off the farm continued to tick higher.

A Statistics Canada report Friday showed the average income of family operating a single farm amounted to just over $163,000 in 2019, down 1.3% from a year earlier. All of the annual decline in 2019 farm income was due to a 5.4% fall in operating income to slightly more than $58,000. On the other hand, average off-farm income increased 1.1% to $105,032 from 2018 to 2019.

With the year-over-year increase, off-farm income accounted for 64.4% of the total income of farm families in 2019, up from 62.9% in 2018, 59.5% in 2017, 58% in 2016 and 60.2% in 2015.

For grain and oilseed operations, off-farm income contributed just over 58.2% or $106,618 of the average total income of $183,130. Off-farm income made up a whopping 83.9% of the total income on beef farms but just 53.6% for hog and pig farms (see table below).

The increase in average national off-farm income in 2019 reflected growth in most of its major components. Pension income (+5.7%) rose the most from 2018, followed by investment income (+2.1%) and total other income (+1.7%), StatsCan said.

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