Reviewed September 2026 against Statistics Canada and USDA Economic Research Service data.

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Canada’s agri-food exports reached $82.2 billion in 2023, according to Agriculture and Agri-Food Canada’s departmental results reporting. The United States bought 60.3% of Canadian agricultural exports in 2024 (USDA ERS), and the sector employed 2.3 million people — roughly one in nine Canadian jobs. This article breaks down what’s actually shipping, what an Alberta economic dashboard shows about soybeans and other field crops, and where to check the numbers yourself as they update.

Table of Contents

How Big Are Canada’s Agri-Food Exports, and Who Buys Them

Canada’s agri-food exports hit a record $82.2 billion in 2023, per Agriculture and Agri-Food Canada’s 2022–2023 Departmental Results Report. That figure sits behind almost every search for “agricultural export trends” or “exporting agri-food” that lands on this page, so it’s worth being precise about what it means and where it comes from before going further.

The United States bought 60.3% of Canada’s agricultural exports in 2024, according to the USDA Economic Research Service’s Canada trade profile. That’s the single most important fact for anyone asking about canada agriculture exports: this is not a diversified export book by destination — it is dominated by one buyer, with China a distant second at roughly 11.6% and every remaining market grouped into “rest of world” in the aggregate USDA figures. If you’re modeling exposure to a single trading partner, that concentration — not the diversification narrative often repeated in agri-food commentary — is the number to start from.

At the crop level, two commodities carried outsized 2024 export value on the USDA ledger: non-durum wheat at $8.1 billion and canola seed at $5.9 billion. Both figures come from the same USDA ERS Canada profile cited above. These two crops alone account for close to $14 billion of the export base — a useful anchor when the $82.2 billion headline number feels too abstract to reason about.

This is also the right place to note what the public record does not give you: a country-by-country export breakdown beyond the US and China, or a read on how trade disputes and tariff actions moved 2024 export volumes. Neither is published at commodity-and-country granularity in the sources above. If your business decision depends on either, USDA FAS’s Global Agricultural Trade System (GATS) and Statistics Canada’s international trade data tables are the places to pull a live, disaggregated series — the aggregate figures here won’t resolve it.

Soybeans Production and the Alberta Economic Dashboard

A specific cluster of searches on this page combines “soybeans production” with an “economic dashboard” for Alberta. Here’s the straight answer: Canada produced 7.6 million tonnes of soybeans nationally in 2024, per Statistics Canada’s Production of Principal Field Crops release (December 2024). That national release includes a provincial breakdown table for wheat, canola, and soybeans — the same table an Alberta-branded economic dashboard would typically draw from.

The gap worth being upfront about: Statistics Canada’s release does not report a separate Alberta soybean production figure in that table. Soybeans in Canada are concentrated in Ontario, Manitoba, and Quebec — Alberta’s climate and rotation patterns favor wheat and canola instead, which is why the province’s own agricultural economic dashboards (Alberta’s Ministry of Agriculture and Irrigation publishes one covering crop conditions and market indicators) tend to report soybeans as a minor or unlisted line item rather than a headline crop. If you need an Alberta-specific soybean number, the accurate answer is that the published national statistical series doesn’t carry one at meaningful volume — check Alberta’s own agricultural statistics dashboard directly for whatever residual acreage it tracks, rather than trusting a number attributed to “Alberta soybeans” from a secondary source.

What Alberta’s dashboard does carry at scale is wheat and canola. Alberta produced 9.9 million tonnes of wheat and 5.1 million tonnes of canola in 2024 — both from the same Statistics Canada release. Against the national totals of 35.0 million tonnes of wheat and 17.8 million tonnes of canola, Alberta alone contributed roughly 28% of national wheat production and about 29% of national canola production in 2024.

Yield is the other half of any provincial dashboard. Alberta’s 2024 wheat yield averaged 47.9 bushels per acre and canola yield averaged 35.6 bushels per acre, both from the same Statistics Canada release. Nationally, soybean yield averaged 49.1 bushels per acre in 2024 — a figure worth citing precisely because it’s the one Alberta-adjacent soybean number that does exist in the public record, even though it’s a national rather than provincial average.

Statistics Canada reissues this Production of Principal Field Crops release on a recurring schedule — the December 2024 edition linked above followed earlier-season estimates for the same crop year. For the current release, search Statistics Canada’s daily release calendar for “Production of principal field crops” rather than relying on the December 2024 figures indefinitely; the provincial breakdown table is the section to open directly.

Wheat, Canola, and the Provincial Numbers Behind Export Volume

Production volume is the upstream number that eventually shows up as export value, so it’s worth separating the two clearly. Statistics Canada’s December 2024 release put national wheat production at 35.0 million tonnes and national canola production at 17.8 million tonnes for the 2024 crop year. Those two totals, combined with Alberta’s provincial shares above, are the production-side numbers behind the $8.1 billion non-durum wheat and $5.9 billion canola seed export figures reported by USDA ERS for 2024.

None of the sources gathered for this article report export prices in USD per bushel or per tonne for wheat, canola, or soybeans at the 2024–2025 marketing-year level — that’s a gap in the government statistical releases, which track value and volume but not a running spot price series. For a current price, the ICE Futures Canada canola contract and CME wheat and soybean futures are the standard live references; Statistics Canada and USDA ERS report trade value and volume, not day-to-day pricing.

Production and export figures: Statistics Canada, December 2024 and USDA ERS Canada trade profile. These are Canada’s main agricultural export products by value: wheat, canola, and — at a smaller reported scale in the USDA summary — soybeans, pulses, beef, pork, and processed foods round out the export basket, though the brief gathered for this piece carries hard figures only for wheat and canola.

Seven Trends Shaping Canadian Agricultural Exports

1. Crop Diversification Into Pulses and Specialty Grains

Growth beyond the wheat-canola-soybean core is showing up in pulses, lentils, and specialty grains, driven by trade agreements that open Asia-Pacific, Middle Eastern, and European markets to Canadian growers. Canola and soybeans — once treated as domestic staples — now anchor plant-based protein supply chains that didn’t exist at this scale a decade ago.

2. Sustainable Food Exports and Carbon Reporting

Buyers in the EU and Japan increasingly require carbon and traceability data as a condition of purchase, not a marketing add-on. Carbon footprinting technology lets Canadian exporters generate the compliance record eco-conscious buyers now ask for before they’ll sign a contract.

3. Agri-Tech and Digital Agriculture Adoption

Satellite monitoring, AI-based advisory, and blockchain traceability are moving from pilot projects to standard operating procedure on Canadian farms feeding export supply chains. Precision agriculture innovation underpins this shift, and product traceability tools give exporters the paper trail international buyers now expect by default.

4. Food Processing and Value-Added Products

Turning raw wheat or canola into flour, oil, or packaged food captures more of the export dollar than shipping bulk commodity. Investment in processing capacity converts Canada’s crop volume advantage into a value advantage — the same tonnes, priced higher. Large-scale farm management platforms increasingly link directly into that value chain.

5. Labour Availability on Export-Oriented Farms

Labour capacity constrains how much of the production increase shown in the table above actually reaches export markets on schedule. Automated machinery, AI-assisted scheduling, and better working conditions are the levers farms are pulling to keep harvest and shipping timelines intact. Fleet management technology is one practical tool for running harvest and transport operations with a smaller crew.

6. Trade Infrastructure and Logistics

Getting 35.0 million tonnes of wheat and 17.8 million tonnes of canola from farm to port depends on rail capacity, grain elevator throughput, and cold-chain logistics for perishables. Bottlenecks here show up as missed shipping windows, not production shortfalls — a distinction that matters when reading export figures against production figures.

7. Market Access, Food Safety, and Traceability

“Product of Canada” carries weight in international markets in large part because of a documented food safety regime and — increasingly — blockchain-based traceability that lets a buyer verify origin and handling rather than take a label on faith.

Canada’s Agritech and Agriculture Analytics Market

Searches for “canada agritech market” and “canada agriculture analytics market” are looking for a market-size figure — and the honest answer is that neither Statistics Canada nor USDA ERS, the two sources this article draws from, publishes a dedicated agritech or agriculture-analytics market-size estimate. Market-sizing numbers for agritech specifically tend to come from private research firms (examples include Mordor Intelligence, Grand View Research, and similar syndicated-research publishers) rather than government statistical agencies, and none of those was in the research brief for this piece — so no figure is asserted here that this article can’t trace to a citable government source.

What the government data does support is the underlying demand signal: a 2.3-million-person agri-food workforce, an $82.2 billion export book, and production volumes in the tens of millions of tonnes annually create real, measurable demand for the kind of data platform this section is about — yield forecasting, crop health monitoring, and traceability software. If you need a sourced agritech market-size figure for a specific report or pitch, pull it directly from a named market-research publisher and cite that publisher, rather than treating an inferred figure as a government statistic.

Where this article can speak with authority is the practical layer: Farmonaut’s satellite and weather API and its developer documentation give any Canadian farm or agribusiness — regardless of province — a way to pull real-time crop health, soil moisture, and weather data programmatically, which is the analytics layer the “agriculture analytics market” search phrase is generally looking for.

Labour, Innovation, and the Digital Gap

The 2.3 million jobs in Canada’s agriculture and agri-food sector, reported by Agriculture and Agri-Food Canada for 2023, span production, processing, trade, logistics, and technology — the full farm-to-fork chain, not just field labour. That scale is also why agriculture jobs in Canada is worth reading as a companion piece to this one: it covers the employment and land-use side of this same sector in more depth than fits here.

Rural connectivity remains a practical constraint on how fast agri-tech tools reach smaller operations, particularly outside the main grain-belt corridors. Farmonaut’s API and app-based access to satellite and weather analytics is built to work for any farm regardless of local connectivity infrastructure: API access and the developer docs are the places to start.

Financing is the other lever behind export capacity — a farm that can document yield and crop health data has a stronger case with lenders. Satellite-verified data for crop loans and insurance reduces the information gap between a farm’s actual production risk and what a lender can see from outside.

Calculator: Estimate Your Farm’s Export-Grade Yield Gap

Enter your own acreage and yield to see how your farm’s output compares to the 2024 provincial and national benchmarks cited above, and what closing that gap would be worth at your own price assumption.

Assumptions: benchmarks are Statistics Canada's 2024 provincial (Alberta wheat/canola) or national (soybeans) average yields, not your specific soil or region. The calculator does not account for input costs, weather risk in the current season, or basis/quality discounts at delivery — it is a directional planning estimate only, not a forecast of what your farm will actually yield or earn.

Where Farmonaut Fits: Satellite Data for Export-Ready Farms

Farmonaut provides satellite-based crop health monitoring, AI advisory, and blockchain traceability to farms and agribusinesses across Canadian provinces. The relevance to everything above is direct: a farm that can document real-time NDVI, soil moisture, and pest pressure data has a stronger export compliance file, a stronger loan application, and a clearer read on whether its own yield is tracking toward or away from the provincial benchmarks in the table earlier in this article.

• Precision agriculture: real-time NDVI and soil moisture data reduce wasted inputs.
• Crop advisory: AI-driven, localized recommendations tied to actual field conditions.
• Traceability: a documented chain of custody for buyers requiring it as a purchase condition.
• Fleet and resource management: tools for running harvest and transport operations with constrained labour.
• Carbon footprinting: live carbon data for compliance reporting and market access.
• Try it: Run your own numbers

Visit Farmonaut's main app page for the full service list, or go straight to the mobile apps below.

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Table: Export Growth Trends at a Glance

Frequently Asked Questions

What are Canada's main agricultural export products?

By reported export value, non-durum wheat ($8.1 billion, 2024) and canola seed ($5.9 billion, 2024) are the two largest single commodities, per USDA ERS. Soybeans, pulses, beef, pork, and processed foods round out the export basket at national scale, though this article's sources do not carry a precise 2024 export-value figure for each of those beyond wheat and canola.

What share of Canada's agricultural exports goes to the United States?

60.3% in 2024, according to USDA ERS's Canada trade profile. That concentration is the single most important fact to model if you're assessing Canada's agricultural export risk profile.

Does Alberta produce soybeans, and where's the data?

Statistics Canada's provincial field crop tables do not report a separate Alberta soybean production figure — the crop is concentrated in Ontario, Manitoba, and Quebec. The national 2024 soybean production figure was 7.6 million tonnes at a 49.1 bushel-per-acre national average yield. For any Alberta-specific number, check Alberta's own agricultural statistics dashboard directly.

How much wheat and canola does Alberta produce compared to the rest of Canada?

In 2024, Alberta produced 9.9 million tonnes of wheat (about 28% of the 35.0-million-tonne national total) and 5.1 million tonnes of canola (about 29% of the 17.8-million-tonne national total), per Statistics Canada.

Is there a published market-size figure for Canada's agritech or agriculture-analytics sector?

Not from Statistics Canada or USDA ERS, the two sources behind this article. Agritech market-sizing figures typically come from private syndicated-research firms; check a named publisher directly rather than treating an unsourced number as government data.

How does Farmonaut support Canadian agricultural exporters?

Farmonaut provides satellite crop monitoring, AI-based advisory, blockchain traceability, and fleet/resource management tools accessible via web, Android, and iOS apps, plus a developer API, to help farms document the yield, compliance, and traceability data export buyers and lenders increasingly require.

Conclusion & How to Track This Going Forward

The figures that matter here will keep moving, and that's fine — the way to check them doesn't change. Statistics Canada reissues its Production of Principal Field Crops release on a recurring schedule; search its release calendar for the current edition rather than treating the December 2024 figures cited throughout this piece as permanent. USDA ERS updates its Canada trade profile similarly. Agriculture and Agri-Food Canada's departmental results reports are published annually and carry the sector-wide export value and employment totals.

The durable method, regardless of which year's numbers you're reading: pull the national production total, pull the province's share of it, pull the export value for the same commodity, and check what share of that export value goes to a single buyer. That four-step check — production, provincial share, export value, buyer concentration — is what turns a headline number into a usable picture of Canadian agricultural export exposure, this year or several years from now.

Explore Farmonaut's satellite-based agriculture management, traceability, and carbon monitoring tools —get started here.

Further reading:

• agri-food sector

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