Nova Scotia farms were in the red last year — again

Taryn Grant · CBC News

· Posted: Jun 09, 2025 5:00 AM EDT | Last Updated: 7 hours ago

Nova Scotia's farming manufacture hasn't turned a nett successful astir a decade, and past twelvemonth mislaid much than $41 cardinal — a reflection of the economical challenges that are concerning manufacture leaders successful the province.

The numbers aren't shocking to husbandman Amy Hill, whose workplace came retired of the reddish successful 2024 for the archetypal clip successful 15 years.

"I'm not making a surviving wage…. My hubby has to enactment off-farm successful bid for this to work," she said.

Hill runs Snowy River Farm, a tiny cognition successful Cooks Brook, N.S., with broiler and furniture chickens, pigs, a assortment of rootlike crops and 1 beloved cattle and its calf.

Hill started the workplace with her husband, and for galore years they were trying to turn the operation. With each large concern — such arsenic caller barns and greenhouses — she said determination was ever anticipation it would wage disconnected successful the future. But they could ne'er marque the numbers work.

She said the quality past twelvemonth that allowed for a tiny nett was a determination to standard back. Her hubby restarted an off-farm vocation arsenic a carpenter successful 2023. Hill netted $6,000 successful 2024.

"It means we turn little for our community, and I'm truly disappointed successful that," she said. "But if we wanted the workplace to past itself, past we had to marque immoderate changes."

Nova Scotia an outlier

Farm profits oregon losses successful each state are calculated annually by Statistics Canada. The bureau released 2024 figures astatine the extremity of May. 

Nova Scotia is not the lone state wherever farms suffered losses past year, but it is the lone state wherever this has been an ongoing occupation for truthful long. Nova Scotia farms, overall, haven't been profitable since 2016.

Alicia King, president of the Nova Scotia Federation of Agriculture, said determination is nary wide reply for wherefore Nova Scotia farms person been consistently struggling, portion farms successful different parts of Canada person not.

"That's 1 of the questions that we bash have, and that we privation to excavation into a small bit," King said.

She said utmost weather and harsh increasing seasons successful caller years person contributed, though they don't explicate the inclination completely.

King said determination is immoderate bully news. Nova Scotia farms are growing, successful immoderate ways.

Statistics Canada figures amusement workplace income rising implicit the past 5 years — a full of 35 per cent from 2020 to 2024. However, that maturation has not kept gait with the rising outgo of operations.

"We are feeling a pressure, there's nary question astir that," said King.

The Nova Scotia Federation of Agriculture hosted a gathering past period with leaders from much than a twelve groups representing antithetic types of farming, and a fistful of provincial furniture ministers.

King said the economical strain connected Nova Scotia farmers was 1 of the main topics. The others were bringing much section nutrient into the province's caller schoolhouse luncheon programme and protecting cultivation land, King said.

Strategy successful the works

King said the federation is moving connected a semipermanent strategy that she hopes volition usher farmers into amended finances. She said the strategy should beryllium implicit successful the adjacent twelvemonth to 18 months.

In the meantime, she's encouraging farmers to crook much attraction to their bottommost lines. 

"We're concern owners and we person to marque decisions with that lens each the time," she said. "And sometimes that's a small spot much hard due to the fact that … there's a passionateness to it arsenic well. And sometimes we fto our passionateness override a concern decision."

Greg Morrow, Nova Scotia's curate of agriculture, declined an interrogation request. His section sent a connection that acknowledged "some challenging times for farmers."

The connection said Nova Scotia is moving with national and provincial colleagues and the manufacture to find solutions. It pointed to a caller top-up of $7 cardinal to a programme that helps effect and rootlike growers bargain season-extending instrumentality — things specified arsenic greenhouses, irrigation, lighting and acold storage.

Hill said targeted, temporary-assistance programs tin beryllium helpful, but thinks wealth should spell to labour if immoderate level of authorities subsidizes farming successful immoderate way.

Hill has 2 part-time employees this year, whose wages are partially covered done a national employment program. If she could prosecute much people, she said, she could turn much food.

"We request bodies helping with this production," Hill said. 

The fig of workplace workers successful Nova Scotia has been shrinking, and the federation projects a shortage of 2,600 workplace workers by the extremity of the decade.