Hay donations to East are below need

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Published: October 10, 2012

The first shipment of prairie hay made it to drought-affected eastern Ontario Oct. 9 with a promise of more to come but quantities are much less than farmers need.

“It really is just a drop in the bucket,” Glenn Buck of the Mennonite Disaster Service Ontario unit said Oct. 10. “People need to realize how big this problem is.”

This week, 30 large bales of hay arrived in Cobden, northwest of Ottawa.

Glenn said another 200 bales are in the pipeline to be shipped from hay-rich prairie areas to hay-deficient Ontario areas where livestock farmers started to feed winter hay in the summer because of the lack of pasture.

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“It is a moving target but the need clearly is far greater than the commitment so far,” said Buck.

Farmers north of Saskatoon organized the Oct. 9 shipment.

Some planned shipments are also from northern Alberta.

The Hay East campaign is a western response to the outpouring of support from eastern Canadian producers a decade ago in the Hay West campaign for drought-ravaged prairie cattle farmers.

However, Buck said this effort lacks a crucial area of support.

In 2002, the federal Liberal government supported the effort and paid the costs of moving hay by rail from east to west.

This time, the federal Conservative government has not made a commitment to the effort.

The Mennonite Disaster Service paid the freight for the first shipments. “But we have a very small pot of money for this,” said Buck.

He said a lobby of CN and CP railways to transport the hay for free drew the response that they will contribute if the federal government does.

Ontario Federation of Agriculture president Mark Wales said that federal support this time is caught up in negotiations about when and how AgriRecovery can kick in to cover some of the transportation costs.

“There is much more AgriRecovery can do but if (agriculture minister) Gerry Ritz wants a good day he can go to Renfrew and announce he is cutting a cheque so we can get ahead of the curve on this,” he said.

Farmers estimate about 45,000 round bales are needed to keep the Ontario cattle herd through the winter.

In the Hay West project a decade ago, 58,000 round bales were sent west by Christmas. “We would like to see the same timeline this time,” he said.

But Wales said Ontario farmers appreciate western support. “Ontario farmers are grateful for the show of support from our western neighbours and for the support of hay, cash and in-kind donations that have begun to come in.”

You can find the Hay East website here: http://www.hayeast2012.com/

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