Alberta Real Gross Domestic Product (GDP) for Agri-Food Industries, 2017

This Update presents an analysis of Alberta’s 2017 Gross Domestic Product (GDP) for agri-food industries (primary agriculture industries and food and beverage manufacturing industries).

GDP is the total unduplicated value of goods and services produced in a region during a given year. GDP of an industry equals the output by the industry minus the value of intermediate inputs that were purchased from other industries, domestic or foreign. This Update presents “real GDP” which provides a measurement of economic performance changing over time, excluding the effects of price changes. An increase in GDP is a sign of a healthy economy while a decline indicates that the economy is not functioning to its full capacity.

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Key Messages

• As measured by real Gross Domestic Product, Alberta’s economy increased 4.9 per cent to $304.7 billion (in chained 2007 dollars) in 2017, following two years of decline. Alberta led all provinces in economic growth, followed by British Columbia at 3.9 per cent. Largely contributing to the Alberta growth were mining, quarrying, oil and gas extraction industries (up 13.3 per cent to $91.9 billion), and manufacturing industries (up 8.1 per cent to $17.7 billion). Nationally, GDP grew 3.3 per cent to $1.7 trillion, posting the strongest year-over-year increase since 2011.
• In 2017, Alberta's GDP for agri-food industries rose 2.5 per cent to $6.5 billion, the second consecutive annual increase. At 12.1 per cent, Alberta's agri-food industries represented the third highest percentage share of total Canadian agri-food GDP ($53.7 billion), behind Ontario (32.6 per cent) and Quebec (21.5 percent).
• GDP for Alberta’s primary agriculture industry increased 1.9 percent to $3.5 billion in 2017. Of this total, GDP for crop and animal production was up 1.8 per cent to $3.4 billion, while support activities for agriculture increased 5.3 per cent to $108.0 million.
• In 2017, GDP for food and beverage manufacturing industries grew 3.2 per cent to $3.0 billion, marking the fifth consecutive annual increase. Specifically, GDP for the food manufacturing industry rose 3.4 per cent to $2.5 billion, while output for the beverage manufacturing industry increased 2.2 per cent to $474.3 million in 2017.
• Meat product manufacturing continued to be Alberta's largest food segment, accounting for $954.4 million or 38.1 per cent of total food manufacturing GDP. Grain and oilseed milling ranked second at $296.5 million or 11.8 per cent.