OTTAWA (Staff) – He is making no promises but federal agriculture minister Ralph Goodale says farmers who cannot thresh their grain this fall because of weather may be eligible for government help.
Under the cash advance program, there is provision for special emergency advances on unthreshed grain.
Goodale said last week he is waiting to see the harvest completed, but if need be, he will consider triggering the program.
“We would need more analysis than is now physically available, to determine if it is appropriate or not,” he said. “If we do arrive in a situation where some of the crop is in the field after it is physically impossible to thresh it this year, we would take a good hard look at that provision to see if it is appropriate.”
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Volatile temperatures expected for this winter
DTN is forecasting a lot of temperature variability in the Canadian Prairies this winter. Precipitation should be close to average.
In the Senate last week, Saskatchewan Conservative MP Len Gustafson said he didn’t think some crops will be harvested this year because of poor weather.
Food inspection plans
A House of Commons committee begins hearings this week on federal plans to create a single food inspection agency, uniting food inspectors from agriculture, health and fisheries departments into one.
But one rural MP thinks the committee is jumping the gun.
Saskatchewan New Democrat Len Taylor last week suggested the committee first look at the controversial Pest Management Regulatory Agency and why it has become such a costly experiment.
Taylor said creation of the PMRA was accompanied by promises of efficiency and cost savings.
Instead, farm groups are complaining the agency is too costly, with a bloated staff and questionable efficiency.
“I am concerned that the government is about to create a similar agency that will have similar problems,” Taylor wrote to agriculture committee chair Lyle Vanclief.
An effort to get to the bottom of the PMRA’s problems could help the government avoid similar mistakes, he said.
The Liberal majority on the committee is unlikely to agree to any linking of the two agencies.
Thinking green
Ontario farm groups have decided to spend $5.6 million of their federal adaptation funds encouraging provincial farmers to operate in an environmentally sustainable way.
Beginning next April, the money will fund three years of Ontario’s environmental farm plan program, under which farmers identify environmental problems in their operations and then set out to fix them.
Jack Campbell, vice-chair of the Ontario agricultural adaptation council, said last week farmers likely will spend $20 million of their own money during the next three years to supplement the federal funding.
The commitment to the environmental farm plans represents 20 percent of the federal adaptation funds that will flow to Ontario.
The adaptation council was established by Ontario’s farm groups to distribute the money.
