Canadian Agricultural Census Data on Farms and Land, 1996-2011

Canadian provincial and national data from the Census of Agriculture covering 1996 to 2011. It includes metrics such as the total number of farms, total land area of farms, average farm size, and total land in crops, with percent changes from previous census years. The dataset is provided by the Government of Alberta under an open license.

Use Cases

• Analyze trends in farm consolidation based on the number of farms with 1,120 acres or larger and average farm size.
• Model provincial shares of agricultural land based on total acreage data and its percent share of Canada.
• Track changes in crop land area over time using the total land in crops and its percent change from previous census years.

Strengths

• Provides a 15-year time series (1996-2011) for longitudinal analysis.
• Includes percent change calculations for key metrics, facilitating trend analysis.
• Data is aggregated at both provincial and national levels for comparative studies.

Limitations

• Column-level documentation is absent; field semantics must be inferred after download.
• Row count is unknown, which may limit suitability assessment.
• Data may reflect temporal bias inherent to the 1996-2011 period.

Provenance

Source

Government of Alberta

Collection Method

Census of Agriculture conducted by Statistics Canada.

Time Range

1996-2011

Freshness

Last updated 2026-03-18 07:02:28.082912; freshness should be verified.

Geography

Canada and its provinces