QUEBEC CITY – Federal and provincial agriculture ministers have signed a five-year, $1.3 billion deal that will allow continued spending on non-business risk management programs such as environmental plans, traceability initiatives and regulatory streamlining.
The Growing Forward deal, signed July 11 in Quebec City at the end of the annual ministers’ meeting, will lead to negotiations in the months ahead to get the agreements signed and start province-specific programs no later than April 1, 2009.
The $1.3 billion budget is one-third larger than spending in the same areas during the five-year agricultural policy framework that ended March 31.
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Federal minister Gerry Ritz said the program-specific agreements will allow provinces to design programs that best suit their local needs, as long as national goals are met.
“Today’s agreement is an historic agreement,” he told a news conference.
“But the reality is that work is just beginning. Over the coming weeks we’ll be working with each of my provincial colleagues to build bilateral agreements based on Growing Forward. These bilateral agreements will make sure programs have the flexibility to meet the unique needs in each region.”
Programs will be funded on a 60-40, federal-provincial basis.
Manitoba minister Rosann Wowchuk said priorities for her province will be deals that continue the popular environmental farm plan and that improve the ability to track cattle from farm to market.
“In Manitoba, we’re very much looking at how we can improve our value-added opportunities so it will cover a broad range of issues,” she said.
Ontario minister Leona Dombrowsky said investment in environmental programs, on-farm innovation and support for new farmers entering the industry will be priorities.
Canadian Federation of Agriculture president Bob Friesen said the agreement-in-principle that includes provincial flexibility to develop programs specific to local priorities is good news after months of negotiation and some uncertainty over whether such popular programs as environmental plans would continue.
“This agreement allows us to move into specific program design that is suitable to particular province priorities and that is welcome,” he said July 11. “Of course, we expect producers will be very much a part of finding the right design.”
Ritz said part of the federal-provincial understanding was that governments will invest in resources to speed up approval of drugs and chemicals farmers need for their operations.
“There’s a commitment in Growing Forward to make sure that veterinary drugs get to them faster than they are now,” said the federal minister.
“Now, it’s an average of six years. We’re putting money into that to make sure it happens. We’re putting extra money into the Pest Management Regulatory Agency. Those are both Health Canada. We’ll do the leg work, the preliminary work, hand Health Canada a package that’s acceptable and will get those products on the shelf faster.”
Last week’s agreement to continue those programs outside of the business risk management program follows the April 1 launch of the next five-year package of financial programs including a top-tier farmer contributory program, a margin-based AgriStability program, production insurance and a disaster program.
But while those programs are now in effect, not all the details have been worked out.
AgriInsurance, which was supposed to expand the traditional crop insurance model to livestock, remains essentially a crop insurance program. Officials have had difficulty finding a design that works for livestock.
“I can’t give you a definitive date,” Ritz said after he was asked when production insurance will include livestock. “We would like to get it done as quickly as possible. I can just basically tell you it’s a work in progress.”
As for AgriRecovery, meant to be the new disaster program, some key questions remain to be answered.
When does a farming disaster move from being covered by the margin-based losses program and production insurance to special disaster coverage? When does a disaster become large enough to increase the federal share of the cost beyond 60 percent? Who makes the triggering decision?
