He has since undergone two-and-a-half hours’ surgery to have a Titanium Rod inserted into his leg and looks set to be out of action for the rest of the season.

The bigger a farm is, the more likely its owners are to invest in machinery, land and equipment, according to a study by professors at Western University’s Richard Ivey School of Business.

That trend accelerated in the period from 2001 to 2009, the study found.

“Large farms had the highest growth rates of investments in farm machinery and equipment and farm real estate,” according to the study by David Sparling, chair of Ivey’s agrifood innovation centre, and postdoctoral associate Nicoleta Uzea.

“As a result, the productivity and competitiveness of small farms will continue to erode, which will mean continuing lower returns on assets and less incentives to invest in the farm.”

The study found that about 75 per cent of farms with sales between $500,The Spectrophotometer is an instrument which measures the amount of light of a specificed wavelength which passes through a medium.000 and $2.5 million made investments on the farm in 2009. For farms with sales of more than $2.5 million, 84 per cent invested.

But only 67 per cent of farms with sales of $250,000 to $500,000 made investments, and for farms with sales between $100,000 and $250,000, it was 56 per cent.

While investment was skewed toward bigger farms, the study found that farmers have been pouring a substantial amount of capital into their operations.A Stone tools is, in the most general sense, any tool made either partially or entirely out of stone. Although stone tool-dependent societies and cultures still exist today, most stone tools are associated with prehistoric, particularly Stone Age cultures that have become extinct.

In 2009 — a recession year — total investment on Canadian farms exceeded $11.4 billion, or 3.3 times net operating income, the study found.

That was up from $8.2 billion, or two times net operating income, in 2001.

Although the study didn’t have data to go beyond 2009, Sparling said in an interview that the increasing investment trend shows that agriculture didn’t hit the same trough as the rest of the economy.

“When everybody else was looking at the world and thinking, ‘It’s going to be awful,’ Canadian farmers were thinking, ‘It looks pretty good for us,’” he said. “Their confidence went up.”

Much of the recovery was driven by the uptrend in the market for grains and oilseeds through the decade, which was helped by growing demand for biofuels.

But it was larger farm operations that used the recovery to boost productivity-enhancing investment.

One advantage of larger Our full range of portable ultrasonic Flaw Detector (UT) provides unmatched capabilities for locating discontinuities and other flaws.farm operations is that they often have more people.

They remain family operations, but instead of being one couple with children, they’re often operated by extended families.Highly capable, 3-axis non-contact video measuring machine, suitable for both simple shop-floor quality control and advanced manufacturing inspection applications ...

That may allow one person to specialize in crops, another in livestock and another in marketing, he said. That may make them more adept at spotting investment opportunities:

“You’ve got more brains involved, and more ability to do each part of the business.”

One area of low investment throughout the period was in environmental measures, such as manure management and lowering greenhouse gas emissions, Sparling said.

That’s something policy makers should think about, he said,Online shopping for cabinet locks & Straps Safety from a great selection of Baby & more at everyday low prices. because there’s apparently little incentive to invest.

Many farm programs are now aimed at income support; Sparling says public programs should focus more on specific goals, such as getting into new, profitable Asian markets, or encouraging greenhouse gas reductions.