Manitoba farmers have a new kind of safety net.
It’s the kind of insurance and income support that will come from new value-added products, new commodities and new ways of doing things.
The federal and provincial agriculture ministers announced a $13.6 million research fund for the province on Feb. 2 using part of Manitoba’s safety net money over the next two years.
“There’s no better way in my view of describing a safety net than being ready,” said federal agriculture minister Lyle Vanclief.
It was the “red letter day” that Jim Elliot, dean of the University of Manitoba’s faculty of agriculture, has been lobbying toward for seven years.
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Elliot said research leads to a viable and competitive industry, which is the best safety net for farmers. When he looked at what Alberta and Saskatchewan were doing in research, he saw Manitoba falling behind.
He stressed the importance of funding long-term work that leads to significant achievements, rather than “individual little projects that you just knock off and they’re not necessarily integrated together.”
But Vanclief noted the fund is designed to pull up to another $13.6 million from the private sector in matching funds.
“The goal … is to get what the industry wants and needs as quickly as they can from … the lab to the field,” said Vanclief.
Provincial minister Harry Enns announced last March the province would spend money on a research fund. But there was considerable debate about whether this is the right way to spend safety net money.
He believes it is. And he has already started lobbying the federal government to continue its funding past March 31, 1999 when the current safety net agreement expires.
Enns said other provinces have used safety net money for development, and this fund could help experimental projects requiring seed money, such as a radical new harvester developed by Winnipeg inventor Bob McLeod.
The decisions on funding will be made by a council chaired by esteemed agricultural economist Clay Gilson. He said whirlwinds of change, whipped up by the loss of the Crow rail subsidy, have swept the province in the past few years, creating the most fundamental shifts he’s seen in his career.
A decade ago, no one would have dreamed Manitoba would be home to the Isobord strawboard plant or Maple Leaf’s new hog plant.
“I don’t think we’ll recognize this province 10 years from now, at all,” he added.
The fund is “quite huge in terms of a needed infusion,” he said. “It won’t cover all research needs, but it will go a long, long way to doing some very important things in this province.”
Seed grower Lorne Hamblin of St. Jean, a federal appointee to the council, said it makes sense to spend safety net money to develop new products.
“We can cut research and we won’t suffer tomorrow, but we’ll sure suffer 10 or 15 years down the road,” he said.
“I think it’s a long-term safety net but for the next generation of farmers … this is money well-spent now.”
