Agriculture will be a key focus when the Saskatchewan government announces its growth plan later this month.
The plan will set out how the province can handle the challenges and opportunities of strong economic and population growth.
The province saw its biggest year-over-year growth since 1921, growing by 22,154 people between July 1, 2011 and July 1, 2012.
Premier Brad Wall said agriculture doesn’t always get the credit it deserves, even with the Saskatchewan Party’s rural roots.
“I think even our government with its rural base and strong representation in rural Saskatchewan has fallen into the same sort of thought pattern around agriculture that I think the whole province has — except for about 35,000 to 40,000 farmers — and that is that farming is an important part of the economy but it’s a vocation. And for some it’s an avocation,” he told reporters.
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Agriculture chugs along while other sectors such as energy and mining take the spotlight, but Wall said the province’s dominant position in exports of lentils, peas, canola and cereals, as well as market dominance in China and Indonesia,makes it obvious that agriculture will continue to be a significant economic engine.
“It’s a huge advantage for us in a world that desperately wants food security,” he said.
“We need to make sure that the infrastructure is there, certainly, in all parts of the province.”
That includes roads and communication infrastructure in rural areas.
The province has boosted funding to the Saskatchewan Trade and Export Partnership to help its members, many of them rural, get their products into new markets, and will continue to promote trade relationships, particularly in Asia.
“In a demonopolized wheat board situation, we need to be in those markets like we were in Indonesia and in Singapore, where grain traders want to know what the post wheat board world is going to look like,” Wall said, referring to a recent trade mission to those countries.
