MAGOG, Que. — Garry Benoit, advocate for Canada’s alfalfa dehydration industry, listened with growing dismay at a national rural conference last weekend as government speaker after speaker promoted policies aimed at creating rural jobs.
Then, he went to a microphone to confront rural affairs minister Andy Mitchell with a different story.
“In my industry, we are seeing reverse rural development,” said the Edmonton-based executive director of the Canadian Dehydrators Association.
Unfair export subsidy competition from other countries and a lack of federal government support have driven Canada’s dehy industry to the wall, said Benoit.
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Saskatchewan’s Parkland Alfalfa plant has closed, wiping out as many as 100 rural jobs, and other plants across the West are seeing their margins shrink and their prospects dim.
In response, production has dropped to a decade low, the value of exports has dropped and as plants falter, farmers are losing an important income option.
“We’re losing an industry that was created to give an alternative to farmers,” he said. “We need help.”
Mitchell dodged.
The government is aware of the problem, he said. Talks continue.
This week, Benoit will try again when he lobbies Mitchell and deputy agriculture minister Samy Watson in Ottawa.
As it has been for the past five years, the industry’s problem in Ottawa is one of definition.
Export alfalfa cubes and pellets — 85 percent or more of the $120 million industry — qualified for a share of the Crow Benefit before 1995. However, it has not qualified for any farm aid programs since, even though foreign governments continue to support their industries.
The reason is that the government targets aid to farmers. It considers the alfalfa plants to be processors ineligible for farm aid.
Farmers who own the alfalfa dehy operations turn their fields over to the plant, which uses employees to seed and harvest.
Benoit said farmers are the core of the industry and should qualify.
“I realize we don’t qualify under the existing rules and we need a special deal,” he said in an interview. “But surely that can be worked out. There seems to be a paranoia within the department about money going to corporations and I understand the general concern, but we are a special case.”
He said the industry needs $30 million a year for several years “to get us through this rough spot.” He said that is 25 percent of the value of European Union subsidies.
The industry’s 30 plants provide full-time and part-time jobs and last year produced 549,000 tonnes of product. Forty percent of production is in northeastern Saskatchewan.
Five years ago, before the Crow Benefit was cancelled, production peaked at 871,000 tonnes.
- WILSON