WINNIPEG – The balanced budget doesn’t seem to offer much in the way of added calories for Manitoba farmers wondering how to balance their financial diets after eating the Crow subsidy.
Agricultural spending is forecast to be down by more than six percent in the 1995-96 fiscal year. The biggest cuts came to spending on the Gross Revenue Insurance Plan, reduced 13.6 percent.
“I think the budget cut is another hit on agriculture,” said Les Jacobson, president of Keystone Agricultural Producers.
Shortly after hearing the budget read to the legislature, Jacobson said he wasn’t surprised at cuts to GRIP, but had hoped for funding to help farmers get through transportation reform.
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“But (there are) no new dollars at all for helping farmers adjust to the new reality in the next couple of years.”
Support for the Net Income Stabilization Account will be increased by $3 million to $16 million. However, $1.9 million of this will be shifted from tripartite stabilization plans that are being rolled into the whole-farm support approach.
The government announced it will put more money into the Agri-Ventures program to encourage processing and value-added projects.
Agriculture minister Harry Enns and other government officials could not confirm how much money will be allocated to the initiative. Budget documents show funding for marketing and farm business management purposes will be increased by almost $283,000.
Enns said he did not have details about how the money would be made available to farmers.
He denied the announcement of more program funding was a carrot for rural voters. The government is expected to call a provincial election this spring.
Roseanne Wowchuk, agriculture critic for the NDP, said she was disappointed in the lack of support for farmers in the budget. More funding for Agri-Ventures “doesn’t seem like a large enough amount if we’re going to be looking for value-added jobs.”
Wowchuk also said that support for upgrading the port of Churchill should have been included in the budget.
Liberal agriculture critic Neil Gaudry said funding for other rural development projects showed that “it’s an election budget.”
