Alberta takes on the world and wins

The numbers tell the story

Alberta’s agri-food industry touches everyone, and keeps our economy strong.

From alfalfa to zucchini, great-tasting Alberta-grown food products nourish a homegrown industry that impacts one of every three jobs in the province. But this A to Z success story has important global implications, too. While the jobs and money stay at home, the vast array of food products produced and processed in Alberta are now shipped to more than 120 countries around the world.

With export success comes homegrown expansion. Alberta is the largest agri-food processor in Western Canada. It accounts for one-half of the region’s shipments and 25 per cent of the national total. In raw economic terms, it means $5 billion of our agricultural commodities and value-added food products leave the country each year, with one-third of our home-grown specialty food companies selling their products to customers in the U.S. and Pacific Rim.

Here’s a closer look at a few of the agri-food industry’s biggest success stories, and what that means to the province.

From the field

• Wheat is Alberta’s largest agri-food export. Total wheat exports equal $1.7 billion a year, with exports of wheat flour topping $7.6 million a year.
• Shipments from Alberta’s cereal grain and flour industry are valued at $122.7 million a year.
• Our processing sector includes 10 flour mills. They represent some 15 per cent of the Canadian wheat milling capacity and 50 wholesale bakery companies.
• Canada is the world’s second largest barley producer with production of close to 12 million tonnes a year. Alberta produces more than half that amount!
• Alberta exports more than $400 million in canola a year. Primarily used for human consumption, it’s a key ingredient in margarine, shortening and salad oil.
• Alberta exports of edible peas and chickpeas are on the rise. Farmers in Alberta already produce more than 620 million tonnes of dry peas a year. That’s nearly doubled in the last three years, all because world demand is on the rise.

In the dairy section …

• Alberta’s dairy industry pours $315 million a year into the provincial economy. Annual exports of dairy products equal $18 million. Where there’s a will, there’s hay
• Alberta is the nation’s biggest producer of timothy hay grown for export to Japan’s dairy industry.
• Discriminating U.S. racehorse markets also import top-quality hay from Alberta.
• Farmers in northern Alberta’s Peace country produce some of North America’s finest forage and grass seed. Like to golf in the U.S.? You could be strolling atop grass that got its start in Alberta!

Pass the protein, please

• Beef production generates $3.1 billion in farm cash receipts a year. That equals 47 per cent of total farm cash income in Alberta.
• But the real news is exports. Albertans consume 17 per cent of the 700,000 tonnes of beef born, fed and processed in this province. Twenty-four per cent is shipped to Quebec, 29 per cent to other provinces, 28 per cent to the U.S. and two per cent to other countries.
• Alberta’s livestock industry exports meat products to the Pacific Rim, Asia and across the North American continent.
• lberta chicken producers raise about 16 million kilograms of chicken meat every eight weeks. 1.25 million kgs of the total are exported, mostly to Cuba and the Pacific Rim.