News
July 12, 2017 | Geoff Geddes
A novel place to plant your savings
Given the fickle Canadian climate, farming for a living is often viewed as a risky proposition. Buying farmland, however, is attracting some interest from Calgary investors seeking a hedge against inflation that will also produce goods and generate income.
The two most common ways to make money from farmland are capital appreciation – when the land increases in value - and income. That income can be from cash rent, calculated by dollars per cultivated acre, or a crop share, where the investor receives a share of the total crop sales each year, usually about 20-30 per cent.
"Farmland has been a tremendous investment over the last 10 years," said J.P. Gervais, chief agricultural economist for Farm Credit Canada. "Not only have land values been rising, but returns from farming have been very strong, with farm cash receipts increasing on a national level by an average of $2 billion a year for the past decade."