EDMONTON (Staff) – Walter Paszkowski thinks good things have happened in agriculture under his tenure.
“Agriculture is once again being recognized for the contribution it can make to the province and it is a tremendous contribution,” the Alberta agriculture minister said during a recent interview.
He credits agricultural cycles for some of the upsurge in farm prosperity, but thinks his government has done a good job of promoting value-added processing, restructuring the agriculture department and letting farmers enjoy the benefits of their hard work.
“We’re out of the business of competing with private enterprise as a government,” he said. “We’re there to be information providers and facilitators.
“We’ve learned to get out of the way and let producers go.”
Paszkowski said his department has reversed its way of developing markets. The research wing used to come up with innovations and new products and then the marketing wing would try to sell them to people.
Now the marketing people ask customers what they want and then go to the researchers and tell them what to develop.
