A well-known Saskatchewan business owner challenges his employees with a unique question: how much should it cost us to generate a dollar of revenue?
There is no single answer as every business or industry is different but we have just received the answer to that question when it comes to agriculture. And Saskatchewan farmers do well on this metric… the best in the land, actually.
The 2024 data determined the most efficient farms produce grains and oilseeds, generating almost $14 billion in Saskatchewan and $32 billion prairie-wide which represents more than half of Canada’s agricultural revenue.
The operating margin in Saskatchewan was just over 21-percent, the strongest performance in all of agriculture. And three-quarters of all revenue came from crops in Saskatchewan while Alberta accounted for three-quarters of the beef revenue on the Prairies.
Of the 11 types of farming operations in the country potato farms came second to grains and oilseeds for the best operating margin but the actual numbers were quite different: an average of $157,000 per grain farm and $750,000 for potato production.
