IT DOESN’T TAKE A BIG FLUCTUATION ... TO UPSET THE MARKET.

Agriculture said P.E.I is simply playing catch-up to the other provinces, which have enjoyed much faster price appreciation over the past decade.

“Because P.E.I. is so small it doesn’t take a big fluctuation in any one of those things to upset the market,” he said.

“I think our size works against us that way. If you can get twenty farmers coming to P.E.I. to buy land it’s a big deal. You get twenty farmers moving from Alberta to buy land in Ontario, nobody notices it.”

From 2005 to 2015, Ontario farmland prices rose by 150 per cent, the thirdlargest percentage increase in Canada, according to an analysis of Statistics Canada data.

That trailed only Saskatchewan and Manitoba at 200 and 175 per cent, respectively.

P.E.I, meanwhile, saw the smallest per cent increase in value per acre during that time period.

The average value per acre of land in Ontario was about $10,000 in 2015 — far ahead of the second-most expensive land, in B.C., at around $5,400 per acre. In P.E.I., the average acre was valued at $2,700 in 2015.

Hinsperger said he would have had to use his farm as equity to buy more land in Ontario if he had stayed there.

“If I threw my entire salary at that mortgage payment and everything I would net off that farm I wouldn’t even be able to make the mortgage payment on that farm for the year,” he said.

“That didn’t turn the lights on, feed my kids, put gas in my vehicles — it’s very difficult.”

For young farmers looking to enter the market and buy land, the challenge is even greater.

“I don’t believe that there’s any way a young person — if you’re not already involved in farming — I don’t believe there’s anyway you can do it in southern Ontario,” Hinsperger said.