The Agricultural Producers Association of Saskatchewan wants you.
Although the organization has seen steady growth since it formed in 2000, its membership sits at 130 of 296 rural municipalities.
That’s up eight from last year.
President Ken McBride said a strategic plan developed this year will take APAS through the next five years.
Among the plan’s goals is to increase the membership base to include the majority of Saskatchewan primary producers.
“You know, membership size, it matters,” McBride said at the APAS annual meeting in Regina. “We need to show that all producers can get together and talk about the issues. All producers have the same sort of issues, whether you’re a member or not a member.”
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One of the issues that has affected APAS membership is how the organization is funded. Many rural municipal residents believe the fee should be individual, rather than taken from tax revenue.
McBride said he doesn’t think that’s such a big issue anymore given the value producers get for their money.
“Six cents an acre is not a huge amount of money for anyone,” he said. “It becomes an issue when they write the cheque for the total amount (of taxes).”
APAS has become a credible voice on behalf of farmers and should continue to lead the way, McBride added. The strategic plan sets out ways to enhance the “appreciation of APAS as professional, respected, highly credible and focused on continuous improvement.”
The plan focuses on agriculture policy development and government relations.
McBride said producers can use APAS as their voice to send a message to government about agricultural policy that will work.
“If producers don’t get together on the same pages, we will never be able to effect the change that is necessary to make these things happen. We need to collectively start to talk about how we can make primary producers more profitable in Saskatchewan.”
During resolution sessions, the membership passed a motion to lobby government to substantially increase the federal share of farm support programs and another asking the Saskatchewan government to treat producers fairly as compared to those in other provinces.
APAS also wants both levels of government to create separate cabinet positions for agrifood business and for agriculture and rural Canada or Saskatchewan.
During debate on a resolution calling for the discontinuation of the agriculture census, several members said they had neither the time nor the desire to share private information with Statistics Canada, which in turn sells that data.
They said the federal government already has farm information from Canada Revenue Agency and farm support programs.
