Wayne Gosselin has the unenviable task of creating a conservation program without knowing how much commitment there is to the idea.
In its 2000 budget, the Saskatchewan government announced it would develop a Conservation Cover Program, but failed to devote money to the cause.
“That makes it a bit difficult for us because we can’t really predict in terms of scale right now,” said the Saskatchewan Agriculture employee responsible for developing the program.
Gosselin must wait until the 2001 budget to see how much money he has, but with the program to be launched in six months, most of the grunt work will be done before the budget announcement.
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Another complicating factor is that the province was anticipating Ottawa would announce a companion program in the 2000 federal budget. That program was an 11th-hour victim of the money diverted to the farm income crisis, said Gosselin.
So instead of attempting to develop a conservation program to work in conjunction with a national program, he has to proceed as if that is not going to happen.
The intent of the Conservation Cover Program is to help producers convert marginal cropland to perennial cover for livestock forage or other uses.
About 46 million of Saskatchewan’s 65 million agricultural acres are used for annual crops and summerfallow. The remainder is devoted to native rangeland, pasture and hay.
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The government would like to see more cropland that has problems with soil, stone, slope, drainage or salinity converted from annual cropping to permanent vegetation cover.
Gosselin is seeking input from producers to help develop the provincial program.
Questionnaires are available at rural service centres or can be downloaded from the Saskatchewan Agriculture website at www.agr.gov.sk.ca. Producers have until Oct. 31 to fill them out and return them. Gosselin is also polling 50 producer groups and environmental agencies on the issue.
A federally funded program ran from 1989 to 1992 and resulted in the conversion of 500,000 acres of marginal cropland in Saskatchewan.
But Gosselin doesn’t want people to think the provincial program will be a copy of the old federal program. For one thing, the new program won’t have the same kind of dollar commitment.
He wants producers to determine whether the focus of the program should be to conserve soils, protect rural water quality, enhance fish and wildlife habitat, reduce greenhouse gases or to increase forage and pasture supplies.
“We don’t want to just limit ourselves to the idea of a per-acre kind of payment. We could go several different ways with this.”
Rewards could come in the form of materials like fences or through property tax credits.
Some people in the livestock industry are concerned that any kind of direct subsidy that encourages forage production could be perceived by foreign competitors as an unfair trade practice. If that is a major concern, the money could be invested in forage research or extension programs, said Gosselin.
