If money is an absolute measure of worth, then I was surprised to learn from a recent Statistics Canada report that cannabis is presumably more valuable than lentils.

The report for the first quarter of 2019 showed that the cannabis industry in Canada earned $271.3 million, while the lentil crop was worth $259.5 million.

It is a bit strange to think that pot is selling better than lentils, which are supposedly as nutritious and proper a food as you are ever going to get – though neither are really known for their taste and flavour.

That same quarterly report showed that farm gate receipts across Canada were up 3.1 per cent in the first quarter. That would seem to be a reason to celebrate except for the inconvenient fact that the cannabis industry was flushing out what would otherwise have been a small loss in revenue.

While there can be widespread consultation on many things in the modern age, one item that did not get much mention was the decision, probably in the last year, to include cannabis revenue as a farm crop. At first blush, it is a logical decision. Cannabis does not yet get grown in fields, and farmers have been mostly shut out of the feeding frenzy, but since the farm gate receipts historically include such things as tobacco, including pot is not such a stretch.

Nonetheless, it is a bad idea. Cannabis has as much to do with conventional food production as vaping has to do with tobacco, so let’s start including the vaping industry in farm gate receipts too so things can look even rosier.

It all seems like an academic argument until we start to project where things could go in the future.

If cannabis in its many forms gets as large as is predicted, we may some day find that official farm gate receipts are being heavily skewed by the production of pot. It allows for the masking of many ills in contemporary agriculture. We don’t want that. We want it to be abundantly clear that when there are losses from trade or weather or pestilence, that the results are not being hidden by the smoke.

Imagine if fruit and vegetable growers are starving for money, but the figures show that agriculture overall is doing just fine because of cannabis.

If there is more revenue because of government money, we need to be able to see that clearly too.

The ledger side of the industry was shocking too. They can’t be compared because the income report was the first quarter of 2019 and the net farm income report was all of 2018, but Stats Canada showed realized net farm income for 2018 fell 45.1%, the largest percentage decrease since 2006. This followed a 2.8% decline in 2017.

Rising feed, interest and labour costs together with little change in farm cash receipts pushed realized net farm income lower in all provinces.

So, cannabis is fluffing up the income side a bit, but mainstream agriculture is getting heavily hit on the expense side. It all needs to be clear.