Community pasture patrons want the Prairie Farm Rehabilitation Administration to hold off on fee increases this summer.
The chair of the patron committee at the Webb pasture, near Swift Current, Sask., said producers can’t handle the increase under present economic conditions.
Bryce Burnett wrote to federal agriculture minister Gerry Ritz and his parliamentary secretary David Anderson, as well as PFRA director general Harley Olson, to tell them the committee had passed a resolution recommending the increase not be implemented.
“It’s mainly because of the economic times,” Burnett said. “We’re receiving about $150 a calf less this year.”
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Grazing fees are set to go up to 45 cents from 40 cents per head per day. This is part of a five-year plan that will see the fees rise from 36 cents in 2006 to 55 cents by 2010.
Burnett said that would be fine if PFRA could guarantee that producers’ incomes would climb by more than 10 percent each year as well.
About 90 producers put 1,700 cattle on the Webb pasture each year, Burnett estimated, adding the land is fragile, sandy and suitable only for grazing.
Other pasture committees in the southwest have expressed similar concerns about the fees.
Increases are also planned for breeding fees, grazing for bulls, horses, calves and foals, and the cost for animals born on pasture.
In addition to poor prices, producers in the area are battling drought and gophers. Burnett, for example, didn’t even cut 120 acres of hay last year because gophers took it all.
He added that people who say community pasture users are getting a break on fees by renting from government are wrong. They are the ones who are paying too much to rent privately, he said. Often, private pasture fees don’t pencil out.
PFRA is aware of concerns about the fee increases. Officials met a year ago with pasture users at a meeting in Consul, Sask.
At the time, they pointed out that grazing fees hadn’t changed in six years and breeding fees hadn’t gone up in 12 years.
There are 85 PFRA pastures, most of them in Saskatchewan.
