Farmland Due Diligence: Soil and Crop Checks Before Closing

Pre-acquisition diligence on a Canadian farmland parcel has a small number of high-leverage questions: is the soil productive enough to back the price, has the ground been farmed consistently, are there consultation or tenure exposures that change the closing math. The Township Canada parcel report answers the first three in a few seconds per quarter.

What the parcel report returns

For any quarter section pulled at /parcel/[lld]:

1. Legal description, GPS coordinates, area in acres — the absolute identifiers for the parcel
2. LSRS soil productivity (Alberta) — 0-100 productivity score for spring-seeded small grains, sourced from AGRASID 4.1
3. 5-year AAFC crop history — dominant crop, year-by-year rotation, Shannon diversity index
4. Treaty / Indigenous consultation flag — whether the parcel sits within Treaty 4, 6, 7, 8, or 10 boundaries

Ag Lite gets 5 reports/month. Ag Farmer is unlimited with PDF export (button shipped — generator ships next). Ag Investor adds the Territory & Prospecting tool for polygon-scale analysis.

The diligence sequence

A typical workflow for an Investor-tier customer evaluating a 60-quarter portfolio:

1. Polygon scan. Open /app/territory. Draw a polygon around the portfolio area. Get the parcel list back with LSRS + dominant crop per quarter. Export to CSV with Salesforce/HubSpot columns. This is the orientation pass — get a feel for the portfolio's productivity distribution and crop mix before touching individual parcels.

2. Top-priority parcel reports. Pull individual parcel reports for the highest-value quarters in the portfolio. Read the LSRS class, the rotation pattern, and any treaty overlap.

3. Cross-check against title and lease paperwork. Confirm the legal description on the report matches the title abstract and any leases. Transposed range numbers, wrong meridians, and stale descriptions are the common errors.

4. Field-verify the priority parcels. Coordinates from the parcel report drop into the route planner for site visits.

What the report doesn't replace

• Soil tests on the specific parcel. LSRS is regional; a 160-acre quarter still benefits from current N, P, K, OM, and salinity samples.
• Title and tax searches. Township Canada surfaces public-data overlays only. Title verification still goes through provincial registries (ISC for SK, Spatial Information System for AB, Land Title and Survey Authority for BC).
• Tenant due diligence on leased land. Recent crop history confirms what was grown; whether the current tenant is the operator you think it is requires registry lookups.
• Operator-name inference on the Territory tool. Currently NOT in the CSV — the account_name column is blank by design pending legal sign-off on inference methodology.

What's coming

• Land Values panel (Investor tier) — regional FCC aggregates per RM/district. Pending source-rights research.
• SK LSRS coverage — compute pipeline in flight.
• Crown dispositions overlay — relevant for parcels with mineral lease or pipeline right-of-way exposure. Spec'd, free-data path via AB Energy GeoView.

Related

• LSRS Soil Productivity Score explained
• AAFC Crop History per Quarter Section
• Find Top-LSRS Farmland in Alberta
• Township Canada for Farmland Investors