1. THE RURAL AND AGRICULTURAL INTERFACE:
TOWARDS A QUANTITATIVE ASSESSMENT
Alessandro Alasia
Research and Rural Data Section
Statistics Canada
Ottawa, Ontario, Canada
Alessandro.Alasia@statcan.gc.ca
Ray Bollman
Research and Rural Data Section
Statistics Canada
Ottawa, Ontario, Canada
Abstract
The interaction between the agricultural sector and rural economic development is increasingly
becoming a policy focus in Canada. This is paralleled by a growing attention to place-base
policy approaches. Currently, most of the literature on agriculture-rural linkages is based on
macroeconomic or geographically aggregated modeling frameworks, while there is no
quantitative framework that allows policy makers to conduct assessment of these inter-
relationships at the community level.
This paper presents a preliminary delineation of a framework that can be used to assess these
linkages at the community level. We use micro-data data from the Census of Agriculture and
Census of Population 2006 to generate estimates of economic flows from the farm sector to the
community, and vice versa. In order to derive some comparable flows in both directions, we
focus on labour market linkages (labour demand from the farm business to the community
versus off-farm labour supply form the farm household to the community). All estimates are
generated using GIS methods and spatial buffers around community geographic centroids.
Our results support some of the insights from the literature about the greater reliance of the farm
sector on the community, than the other way around. About 850 agricultural intensive
communities have stronger labour linkages from the local economy to the farm households.
About 320 agriculture intensive communities have stronger labour linkages in the opposite
direction, with estimated value of labour generated by the farm business greater than the
estimated off-farm labour supplied by the farm household to the communities.