NAICS 111920Canadian industry · 6-digitregional market

Cotton farming

This Canadian industry comprises establishments primarily engaged in growing cotton. — Statistics Canada, NAICS 2022A

No business count is published for this code. Statistics Canada does not report it in the business counts table, and the US County Business Patterns programme either excludes it or codes it differently. That is stated rather than estimated.

How businesses here compete

The structural profile of subsector 111, which every industry beneath it inherits. This is analyst judgment from how the subsector is organised — not research into this industry, and not a measurement.

regional competitionhigh capitalUNVERIFIEDinherited from 111 Crop production

Land and machinery are the entry ticket and the crop sells at a price set elsewhere. The reachable niches are the ones that escape the commodity — controlled environment, direct-to-consumer, specialty crops.

Who sets the price: Commodity exchanges and a handful of processors; the grower is a price taker.
The software it runs on: Farm management, agronomy and precision-ag platforms, increasingly bundled by equipment makers and input suppliers.

Market screens and studies

Market-entry records filed along this branch of the hierarchy. A record at or beneath this code is about this industry; one above it is about something wider that contains it.

Screened one level up. Nothing is filed at this exact code; the screen for 1119 Other crop farming covers it.

Operating businessScreenedfiled at 1119

Maple Syrup Production & Other CropsOne thing must be true

binding constraint: entry cost + regulatory drag

A residual code — hay, tobacco, hops, open-field cannabis, combination farms and maple — and most of it cannot be screened as one thing. The count points at the niche worth a look: Quebec holds 1,662 of the 4,464 establishments [A], and Quebec is maple. This is the most reachable door in crop farming, and the screen says so plainly. Canada produced 18.9 million gallons of syrup in 2025, the second-highest year on record, 90% of it in Quebec [A]; the producers' board, citing high demand and a strategic reserve low on stocks, has responded by issuing quota. At its January 2024 draw, Québec Maple Syrup Producers allocated 7 million new taps against 2,709 eligible applications for 9.4 million, admitting 739 new enterprises out of 814 start-up applications [A]. That is not a closed shop. The drag is in how the door opens. Bulk syrup in Quebec may only be sold through the board's agency, at its negotiated price, against quota — and quota is issued when the board decides to issue it: seven million taps in 2021, again in 2023 — the issue drawn in January 2024, partly by lottery, with 5% reserved for start-ups on public land — and again in June 2025, then no new quota at all for 2026 [A]. An entrant cannot choose its year, its size or its price. And the application presupposes the real asset: a stand of mature sugar maple, which takes decades to grow and which the 1,871 existing enterprises that also won expansion taps [A] are better placed to buy or lease than a newcomer. Outside Quebec there is no quota and no agency, and also a tenth of the industry. This screen does not find a clean kill for maple — it finds an entry gated by a regulator's timing and a forest. A full study would price a tapped bush per tap and test returns at the board's price. Hay, hops, tobacco and the rest were not examined.

NAICS 11195 vendors named12 sourced figuresOpen →

Filed above — wider than this industry

Operating businessScreenedfiled at 111 Crop production

Small-Scale Crop ProductionStructure decides

binding constraint: entry cost

Land price per acre has decoupled from what an acre can yield, which means the entry cost is set by a real-estate market rather than by an agricultural one — in the BC valleys most acutely. The decoupling is measurable in two of Statistics Canada's own tables: the average value of Canadian farm land and buildings went from $2,550 an acre in 2015 to $5,643 in 2025, while realized net farm income for the whole country went from $7.02B to $8.34B [A]. The asset repriced by 121% against an earnings base that grew 19%, and Ontario at $21,073 an acre and British Columbia at $10,577 are where the gap is widest. An entrant buys the acre at a price the crop cannot service, and pays it to a seller whose alternative bidder is a larger farm or an investor rather than a new operator. The versions that clear the hurdle are high-value protected culture and direct marketing, both of which need capital and neither of which is farming in the sense the buyer usually means — Local Bounti, one of the listed controlled-environment growers, sold $48.4M of produce in 2025, lost $94.4M doing it, and carried $483.1M of long-term debt at year end [A]. The farm-management software above this code is screened separately at 1151.

NAICS 1115 vendors named9 sourced figuresOpen →

Software serving this industry

The vertical software markets filed along the same branch — who sells to these businesses and who they would have to displace — and then the generic categories every business buys whatever it does.

No vertical software market has been recorded along this branch. What the subsector typically runs on: Farm management, agronomy and precision-ag platforms, increasingly bundled by equipment makers and input suppliers.

And what every business buys · 25 generic categories

Sold to every industry rather than this one, so they are filed against the software industry's own code. The same few vendors recur across most of them.

Who works here

The occupations employed in Agriculture, forestry, fishing and hunting, most concentrated in it first. The share is measured against the whole sector, not this industry — the published cross-tabulation stops there.

Concentrated in this sectorA

Managers in agriculture, horticulture and aquaculture One industry 93.1%

Fishing vessel masters and fishermen/women One industry 92.4%

Workers in agriculture and fishing occupations One industry 88.9%

Agriculture, horticulture and harvesting labourers and related occupations One industry 85.4%

Logging machinery operators One industry 81.9%

Logging and forestry workers Mostly one sector 61.5%

Contractors and supervisors, agriculture, horticulture and related operations and services Mostly one sector 16.3%

Managers in natural resources production and fishing Mostly one sector 12.5%

Logging, forestry, landscaping and other related labourers Mostly one sector 6.5%

Tourism and amusement services occupations Mostly one sector 6.2%

These jobs are mostly done here. An operator in this industry is competing for them against others in the same industry, not against the whole economy.

And the jobs every business has

Other technical trades Across the economy 14.2%

Accounting, insurance and related business administrative occupations Across the economy 3%

Building maintenance installers, servicers and repairers Across the economy 1.6%

Legislative and senior managers Across the economy 1.5%

Financial, insurance and related administrative support workers Across the economy 1.4%

Office administrative assistants - general, legal and medical Across the economy 1.1%

Administrative, property and payroll officers Across the economy 1%

Shoe repairers, shoemakers and upholsterers Across the economy 1%

Found across at least fourteen of the twenty sectors. In a small establishment several of these are usually one person, or an outside provider.

All 162 occupations →