Alberta Agriculture has identified 16 key locations across the province
where it will offer full-services to farmers. Other existing locations
will be scaled back to provide fewer services or will be closed.
Don Young is chair of strategic change, the department helping with
restructuring. He said the 16 hub offices would have a group of
specialists and some administrative support staff.
The Leduc Food Processing Development Centre, the Crop Diversification
Centre North at Oliver and the Crop Diversification Centre South at
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Brooks are included in those key hub locations.
It is too early to say which of the other existing offices will cut
services.
“We don’t know where they’re going to yet,” said Young after releasing
to the staff the list of hub office locations and possible co-location
offices.
The 40 sites listed are locations where there has been or is now an
Alberta agriculture office or staff.
“We are saying these are possible co-locations, we’re not necessarily
saying that all of them will be, and certainly all of them won’t be,”
said Young.
Alberta Agriculture is changing the way agriculture services are
delivered. Programs will focus on helping farmers add value to their
crops or livestock.
Now, about $4.5 million, or 10 percent of the department’s $450 million
budget, is used to increase value-added production. That will double to
$8 to $9 million or 20 percent of the budget.
Like all provincial government departments, agriculture is under
pressure to trim spending. Amalgamating offices is one way to do it. It
will be at least mid March before all the offices and staff are in
place.
Once the branch heads are hired over the next few weeks, they must
decide what agriculture programs are needed in the province, where they
should be located and who should fill the positions.
“We’re looking at the overall need of the area, the programs that we’re
going to have, and the staff we’re going to need to fill the needs,”
Young said.
The co-locations will house support staff for programs like innovation,
business or agriculture entrepreneurship. To help trim costs, there
will be no administration staff.
Across the province there will be several access locations where
producers can pick up agriculture application forms or agriculture
information from a display. There will be no agriculture staff.
The Alberta government is searching for ways to cut an additional $1
billion from the March budget because of a decrease in oil and gas
revenues.
