Late in July Ag leaders across Canada looked forward to the new Canadian Agricultural Partnership announced by the feds. The five-year, $3 billion investment will come into effect April 1, 2018, replacing Growing Forward 2.

Florian Possberg, the Chair of the Saskatchewan Pork Development Board, said confirmation that Canada’s Agriculture Ministers have agreed to move forward with the next Agricultural Policy Framework provides the stability farmers need to go forward with confidence.

Canada’s agriculture ministers agreed to the principal elements of a new federal, provincial, territorial agricultural policy framework when they gathered for their annual meeting in St. John’s.

Possberg said this provides a framework under which the federal and provincial governments and industry support many of things that are vital for our agricultural industry to operate.

“The partnership lays out the strategy for funding science, research, and innovation for marketing, for our risk management programs and it provides us with the confidence that government will fund these programs for the next five years,” he said. “Through research, for example, we have Swine Innovation Porc that we know is going to get funded for individual research projects. Regarding markets and trade, and a significant funder of Canada Pork International which supports billions of dollars’ worth of pork business and risk management. It’s the whole AgriStability, AgriInvest, AgriRecovery suite of risk management programs that provide us with a safety net regarding bad things happening regarding profitability. So it is quite important for us to have this laid out for us that we know we can go forward with.”

Possberg said knowing this agreement will be in place for next spring provides the stability producers need to move forward with confidence.

Stewart Cressman, the Chair of Swine Innovation Porc said Canada’s pork industry is well positioned to move forward with research when Canada’s next Agricultural Policy Framework kicks in next March.

Cressman said indications are that funding for research under the new initiative will be similar to what was made available under the current program although the government has not announced support ratios and other details, yet.

“I think, first of all, we have to have the formal announcement of the program, the specific rules around how we write a request for funding to the federal government, what are the cost share ratios,” he said. “The last time we put 25 cents up and the federal government responded with 75 cents, and we’re not sure what the cost share ratio will be on a go forward basis. That’s one of the areas that have yet to be determined.”

Cressman said Agriculture and Agri-Food Canada would allow them to submit the research proposals they have reviewed.

“Those were submitted to Agriculture and Agri-Food Canada for comment in early July. Once they announced the program and we make the final submission, we have some of their comments on what we proposed currently and we can adapt it to the form that they’re looking for once they announce the rules,” he said. “They then have reduced time to evaluate because they’ve done a first look at the research projects already.”

Cressman said this was something the government extended to all of the commodities as a way of reducing any gap between the time of the old program ending and the new one beginning. •

— By Harry Siemens