Saskatchewan’s main farm lobby group wants $3.4 billion in aid for the province, more than three times what Ottawa doled out to all 10 provinces one year ago.
It is a big request, one that put Agricultural Producers Association of Saskatchewan at odds with Saskatchewan agriculture minister Mark Wartman, who earlier this month led a delegation to Ottawa that lobbied federal politicians for $575 million in spring relief.
APAS opted out of that trip, saying Wartman’s demands wouldn’t meet the needs of the province’s farmers, leaving the mission to make its pitch minus Saskatchewan’s main farm lobby voice.
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Wartman said it would have been nice if APAS had accompanied him, but he understands the group’s desire to make up for years of neglect from the federal government.
“The Conservatives got a fair bit of support in this province and that kind of an ask from APAS illustrates some of the hope that people had in electing the Conservatives.”
Wartman’s contingent, which included the Saskatchewan Association of Rural Municipalities, the National Farmers Union, the Saskatchewan Canola Growers Association, the Farm Support Review Committee and the Porcupine Area Disaster Group, felt it was more prudent to take a smaller number forward given the party’s campaign pledge to add $500 million to the existing agriculture budget.
“Our press for $575 million we felt was within the parameters of the budget and within the parameters of the recent historical context of what the federal government has been providing.”
Wartman said there is no ill will surrounding the snub by APAS.
But a University of Saskatchewan agricultural economist said the relationship between the minister and the provincial farm group has been strained in recent years.
“From what I hear, the minister and APAS don’t always see eye to eye on a lot of things,” said Hartley Furtan, a former deputy minister of agriculture in Saskatchewan.
“It’s hard to say what this particular action is, whether it is a continuation of that feeling or whether it was just a one-off regarding the money.”
Wartman acknowledged there has been tension and a butting of heads with APAS in the past but there is a new willingness to work together since Ken McBride replaced Terry Hildebrandt as president of the organization.
“We’ve been working on building a stronger relationship and I think that has been happening,” said the minister.
“We’ll see higher levels of co-operation as we move forward, at least I hope so. We’ll continue to work for that.”
McBride said the decision to sit out Wartman’s trip to Ottawa had nothing to do with animosity between the provincial farm lobby and Saskatchewan Agriculture. The group just couldn’t support Wartman’s number.
“We believe that it was understating the situation,” he said.
APAS figures the federal government should pay the province’s farmers $75 per acre, which amounts to the average direct cost of putting a crop in the ground this spring.
Based on 45 million acres of cultivated land, that works out to $3.4 billion in aid, an amount the group feels will allow debt-burdened producers to plant a crop this spring and to realize a positive net income regardless of slumping commodity prices.
The group’s admittedly steep request, which has been incorporated into the Canadian Federation of Agriculture’s $6.1 billion Canada-wide demand, stems from conversations it had with federal MPs.
“They basically told us, ‘don’t tell us what you think you need, tell us what the hurt is,'” said McBride.
He said the group is tired of going to Ottawa with hat in hand to ask for what amounts to a “dramatically inadequate” sum of money that only partially covers rising input costs.
With the recent change in government the association feels the time is ripe to make up for lost ground.
“A lot of those new MPs have rural backgrounds, rural connections, so we believe it is a chance now to make this case for what has happened over the last number of years,” said McBride.
Although the $3.4 billion request is “a big number” that is $1.1 billion more than all three prairie farm groups were asking from Ottawa in 2005, McBride said it is a reasonable request considering the state of agriculture.
“Are we going to achieve that? I don’t know.”
He doesn’t expect an aid announcement from the federal government until after the budget is tabled on May 2.
