Farm cash receipts down 3% through first 9 months of 2024

Statistics Canada just released their estimates of farm cash receipts for the first nine months of the year. ?While revenues are a major driver of financial health, let's not forget that cash receipts fail to capture production costs, which are just as important to understand profitability trends.

On the surface, a relatively modest Year-To-Date (YTD) decline in 2024 farm cash receipts suggest minimal disruptions for the farm economy. But as usual, aggregate and/or average statistics often hide a few interesting and important facts. It’s a tale of two sectors – crops and livestock.

Receipts of grains, oilseeds and pulses of 17.2% YTD, driven by low commodity prices and dry production conditions.

In contrast, most livestock sectors record strong gross revenues, or are rebounding. The cattle sector recorded an increase of 11.6% YTD, even after considering the sizable increases in 2023 and 2022.

The hog sector rebounds slowly from revenue pressures in 2023, but is still lagging 2021-22.

Dairy revenues trended up with overall dairy market growth, recoding a 3% increase YTD.