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Agri-Food Facts
By George Stock
Oxford County Library
For The Oxford Review
July 10, 2001
If you want to learn more about the $95 billion Canadian industry that produces your food.
Or you are meeting with M.P. John Finlay to lobby on behalf beef industry and need to know the most recent sales figures to underscore its importance in the Canadian economy.
Or you are writing an essay about international trade in food products and need some descriptive statistics to highlight your introductory remarks.
Or you are developing a marketing plan for a hot new product for the commercial vegetable industry and need to know the number of operations across Canada.
Or you need a couple of statistics to make your point in a letter to the editor of the Sentinel-Review.
You need a convenient, reliable and current source of information and that would be Agriculture and Agri-Food Canada’s “All About Canada’s Agri-Food Industry” site www.agr.ca/cb/factsheets/2indus_e.html.
From this site we learn that the agi-food industry in Canada generates over $21 billion annually in export sales. Each of the 280,000 Canadian farms produce on average enough food for 120 people annually, but it takes the hard work of about 1.9 million Canadians to bring that food to our tables.
In addition to information about the overall agi-food industry, the site links to individual pages of statistics about each of seventeen commodity groups, not only including red meats, dairy and other standard commodity sectors but also organic industry, snack foods and seafood.
The information is incredibly diversified. For example, 22 million laying hens annually produce some 6 billion eggs. There are 10,500 beekeepers in Canada and our production per hive is about 82 kilograms per year, double the world average. Spirits have been distilled for more than 200 years in Canada. The first distilling licence in Canada was issued in 1794.
Check out this site. It’s interesting to surf and a very handy tool for a variety of purposes.
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