Wade and Jaimie Nelson check up on their cattle on their ranch near High River, Alta. on March 8.Todd Korol /The Globe and Mail
Last week, Charlotte Wasylik sold more than a quarter of the cattle on the Alberta ranch her family has owned since 1993.
It’s a calculated move. After more than three years of drought and water shortages, the Wasyliks know what to expect this summer. Having fewer cattle to feed means less risk of the entire farm collapsing.
And they’re not the only ones.
Cattle numbers across Canada fell to their lowest point since 1989, according to data released by Statistics Canada in January. Some 97 per cent of Canadian cattle farming is done on small family farms across the country. Drought conditions have left farmers unable to harvest their own crops to feed their animals. It’s too expensive to buy feed for the whole herd so farmers have had to pre-emptively send cattle to slaughter to ensure they can feed the ones remaining.
“We just don’t want to be stuck when summer comes along and there’s no rain,” Ms. Wasylik said. “We’d love to be proven wrong.”
Ms. Wasylik and her family have around 150 heifers – breeding cows – and run a cattle farm in Vermilion, Alta. However, drought conditions have shrunk the Wasyliks’s grassland so, every summer, their cattle graze in rented farmland outside of the province.
Grazing the cattle means more feed saved for the winter months when the cattle can’t feed themselves. But shipping them over the border to Saskatchewan is only a short-term fix: Last year, their cattle came back early because grasslands in Saskatchewan are shrinking too.
So the Wasyliks sold off 80 heifers last week and they know they may have to do it again.
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Selling heifers to slaughter limits a cattle farm’s ability to sustain itself by producing new calves. And because there are fewer cattle to buy, prices per head have soared for those who can afford to feed them.
“We had extreme drought [three years ago] that basically ruined our hay crop,” said Ben Martens Bartel, a cattle farmer in Lanigan, Sask. “So, we reduced our herd to what we figured was a sustainable level.”
Since then, Mr. Martens Bartel said his farm has acquired more land to grow hay, so he is starting to cautiously build his herd back up.
“Prices for breeding heifers are ridiculous, though, so we are not buying. We’re breeding. But our numbers will not be going back to what they were before. It’s too expensive.”
When it’s both expensive to buy and feed cattle, and there is money to be made in simply selling cattle, it’s easy to understand why the number of Canadian cattle heads are dropping. Factor in the costs to run a ranch, and some farmers are exchanging all their cattle for grain agriculture or leaving farming for good.
“The last few decades have just been so successful for grain farming, whereas livestock hasn’t really kept up,” said Wian Prinsloo, a cattle farmer in Belmont, Man.
“In our area, a lot of land has been converted to annual crops. It’s just difficult to maintain a viable livestock business when using your land for just crops would pay you so much more.”
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Drought is impacting grain farmers as well, but it hits cattle ranchers doubly hard. Most cattle farmers are also grain farmers to grow feed for their animals, supplementing what they can’t grow with purchased feed and minerals.
But home-grown feed has become scarce for the same drought reasons.
In early 2024, Canadian farmers had around 11.1 million cattle and calves on their farms, with Alberta in the lead with over 4.8 million cattle, Statscan data show. However, there was a marked 2.1-per-cent decline from last year’s herds, predominately because of drought. In Alberta, eastern and southern areas are facing some of the worst drought conditions on record.
“I haven’t been able to make a single bale of hay for three years,” said Wade Nelson, a cattle farmer in High River, Alta. “Most farmers plan on feeding their cattle for 200 days [before selling the animal], which means you need quite a bit of feed. And when you can’t produce it yourself, buying it becomes a very expensive endeavour.”
Mr. Nelson has around 300 head of cattle and last year sold off 40, while also taking up more and more of his farmland to feed his animals.Todd Korol /The Globe and Mail
Mr. Nelson has around 300 head of cattle and last year sold off 40. He has also had to rip up more and more of his farmland to feed his animals.
He said he is committed to his herd for the year, but if it’s anything like the past three, “I just don’t know how we’d be able to keep our cows.”
Further declining cattle numbers will mean rising beef prices. If Mr. Nelson decides to sell his cattle, he is positioned to make a profit. If he decides to stay in the industry, there’s no guarantee that the beef his farm produces will be as highly profitable.
Money generated from high consumer prices just isn’t making its way down to the family farm.
“While supply may appear to be lower and beef prices are rising, small beef producers still feel a pinch with margins due to rising input costs of feed, fuel and other inputs,” said Nathan Phinney, president of the Canadian Cattle Association.
”It’s very discouraging for an industry that has been witnessing a steady decline in numbers over the last three decades.”
Mr. Prinsloo said the number of cattle on Canadian farms began to decline with the arrival of bovine spongiform encephalopathy (BSE) – known as mad cow disease – between 2003 and 2005.
Most Canadian beef is exported to other countries so when BSE stopped exports, farm incomes fell to their lowest levels in three years in 2003.
Combining this with the increasing age of farmers, skyrocketing input prices brought on by the pandemic, and extreme drought, the Canadian cattle industry has been slow to recover.
“There’s always been highs and low [with cattle farming],” said Mr. Martens Bartel. “But it just seems like those swings are getting worse as time goes on.”