It seems every time I take a walk in the woods around New Brunswick I run into old apple orchards - or just small clusters of apples trees. So just for fun I poked around in the data. It turns out we have easily accessible data on apple production in New Brunswick going back to 1926.
For the most part New Brunswick has produced a modest amount of apples over the years. The annual crop amount peaked in the late 1950s and early 1960s at around 11,000-12,000 and dropped down and remained at around 5,000 tons/year from the early 1990s to now - with a little spike up in 2020 (6,000).
Of course, Nova Scotia - known for its apples - produces five times as many in recent years and at its peak production in the 1930s Nova Scotia was producing an average of more than 130,000 tons per year compared to only 3,000 in New Brunswick.
In 1938 Nova Scotia produced more apples in one year than New Brunswick has in the past 30 years. Between 1926 and 2020, Nova Scotia farmers have produced over six million tons of apples compared to only 568,000 in New Brunswick. Using Google as a trusted source, that works out to more than 40 billion apples produced in Nova Scotia in that time frame. That’s a lot of apples.
I have been thinking about agriculture a lot in recent years. The amount of fallow farm land has been growing significantly even as there is increasing demand for locally produced products. We will see from the agricultural census this year how things have changed in the past 5 years but I suspect the average age of a farmer or farm manager will have increased again - and there have not been enough young farmers. We do hear stories of young farmers but I’m not sure that is translating into a trend.
The economic benefits to the province could be substantial. Every 10% boost in agricultural product and corresponding value-added food production boosts provincial GDP by more than $100 million and that means millions in new tax revenue to pay for health care, roads and other public services.
We need to find new farmers -increasingly from abroad and they need to be able to make a buck - which is tricky in a place like New Brunswick. Some of that relates to serving local markets at a better price for the products and some of it relates to finding exportable crops/value-added that can be profitable at scale.
I’m not suggesting we plow under our forest land and create vast new areas for agriculture production. I am suggesting we need to look at agriculture strategically and think about its economic potential and the other value that having locally produced agriculture products brings to a community.
Relative to the size of the economy, New Brunswick ranks eighth among the 10 provinces for the GDP contribution from crop production, sixth for animal production and ninth for winery/distillery production. However, New Brunswick ranks 2nd for value-added fruit and vegetable products manufacturing (mostly potatoes) and still third for the GDP contribution from dairy product manufacturing.
We saw a little dip in the GDP contribution from crop and animal production in 2020 but over the past few years the numbers have been encouraging. Between 1997 and 2007, the average annual GDP contribution from this activity in New Brunswick was $303 million (real GDP). From 2015-2020, the amount was $431 million. That is a 42% rise in the GDP contribution and it has downstream impacts on value added production.
I think we should be turning over every stone to see what economic opportunities are hiding there and I believe agriculture holds the potential for future growth.
Amen