Abstract

Large livestock farms (which includes very large livestock farms) have been expanding in the last few years. This reflects the trend throughout Canadian agriculture towards fewer, larger farms producing more food, either for Canadian tables or for export. Large livestock farms are found in most agricultural areas of Canada. Notably, they’ve expanded in some of the country’s more intensely settled rural areas – those within commuting distance of metropolitan centres – where the human population has also been rising.

Record numbers of cattle and hogs were reported in the 2001 Census of Agriculture. Cattle and calf numbers were up 20% from 1991; hog numbers rose 37%. However, those animals were being raised on fewer farms; thus, the average size of livestock farms was much larger in 2001 than in 1991.

But a simple head count isn’t a precise measure of the concentration of large livestock operations, because some animals are bigger than others. To overcome this problem, a measure called “animal units” has been developed, which compares how much different animals eat and excrete.