A committee charged with finding a way for environmental organizations to buy land under Saskatchewan’s farm ownership laws has failed to reach consensus.
Instead, it has returned three guiding principles to the provincial government for its decision. One of the principles calls for purchasers to focus on critical habitat. The other two are the need for financial incentives to encourage producers to protect land, and proper and appropriate wildlife compensation.
But the Agricultural Producers Association of Saskatchewan is already urging the province not to allow organizations like Ducks Unlimited Canada and Nature Conservancy Canada to buy large amounts of land and take it out of agricultural production.
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President Terry Hildebrandt said these types of organizations are putting pressure on a two-year moratorium under which the environmental groups were not allowed to buy land.
A Feb. 28 News release
news in which Hildebrandt said opening up such sales would be “anti-agriculture, anti-community, and anti-rural Saskatchewan” has struck a nerve.
“It’s absolute nonsense,” said Lorne Scott, a former environment minister who represented Nature Saskatchewan on the committee.
“I think it’s wrong to think that south of the forest fringe all 72 million acres is farmland and nothing else.”
Brent Kennedy, manager of provincial operations for Ducks Unlimited Canada, said land purchases for wetland protection are just a small part of what DUC is about.
“To say that we’re anti-agriculture is not accurate,” he said, pointing out programs like DUC’s $70-per-acre permanent cover program and its contributions to winter wheat research.
Saskatchewan’s Farm Security Act was amended, effective Jan. 1, 2003, to free up some of the purchase restrictions placed on Canadian residents.
Corporations that want to own land must be either 100 percent Canadian owned and not publicly traded, or be agricultural companies engaged in the business of farming and with a majority of voting shares held by resident farmers.
Minority shareholders can receive exemptions from the Farm Land Security Board if the holding is more than 10 acres in size.
Non-agricultural corporations are restricted to 10 acres, but may also apply for exemptions.
Farm organizations say that DUC and Nature Conservancy are not 100 percent Canadian-owned because they get funding from American sources.
The Farm Land Security Board’s general manager, Dan Patterson, said it hasn’t been granting exemptions to conservation groups not because of a moratorium but because of an acknowledgement that there had to be a better way to accommodate such requests within the legislation.
Patterson said there have been many exemptions granted over the years on a case-by-case basis, but the organizations would like a long-term fixed exemption, similar to what the Saskatchewan Wildlife Federation has.
Hildebrandt argued that farmers can offer the same land stewardship benefits that conservation organizations can.
He said farmers can work with these organizations, but shouldn’t have to lose ownership or control of their land.
