Farm groups say federal agriculture package falls short

The president of the Agricultural Producers Association of Saskatchewan (APAS) says the $252 million the federal government announced for the agriculture sector Tuesday is nowhere close to the total for which producers were hoping.

“As a Saskatchewan grain producer, really we’re not seeing a lot of hurt, but boy, when you look at the livestock sector, or horticulture industry or greenhouse industry, or the equine industry, or even aquaculture/fish processing, there’s really demonstrable hurt going on,” Todd Lewis said.

“And in many peak cases, we are going to lose producers and production and that is not a good thing for the country.”

Lewis said there seems to be a misunderstanding of the urgency of the situation.

“One way of absolutely guaranteeing no production is don’t put the seeds in the ground,” he said. “A lot of our horticultural industry across Canada, producers are at the point of making those decisions if it’s worthwhile going through with the planting season.”

He says in Saskatchewan if producers start losing some of their cattle herds, it’s going to be hard to get that production back.

The Canadian Federation of Agriculture had asked for $2.6 billion to help support the agriculture industry through the COVID-19 pandemic.

“There’s definitely a gap of understanding there,” said Lewis. “(The federal government) asked for more information, (so) we’re going to continue to give it to them.

“It is frustrating, but the government does have a lot of irons in the fire right now and we are just going to try to keep pushing that agriculture, when it comes to food security, is really important.”

With what’s happening with meat-packing plants in Alberta that are not operating at capacity, Canadians are already seeing increased beef prices, and Lewis doesn’t want to see those prices continue to spike.

“We sure want to ensure we have lots of product on the shelves for Canadians at a decent price,” he said.

Lewis says the federal government should be putting up more money now rather than having to bail out the industry later.

“Put some money in the front end here now so we don’t have to spend a whole bunch of money trying to repair and get the industry back on its feet in six or 18 months from now as we come out of COVID,” he said.

Stock growers also wanted more

The president of the Saskatchewan Stock Growers Association said the federal government’s funding falls short of what producers need to keep the food supply chain running smoothly.

“My initial reaction is that (the aid program) is probably not even close to what the industry has been asking for. There’s a lot of asks that have been totally omitted,” Bill Huber said.

The aid package announced by Prime Minister Justin Trudeau splits the $252 million across multiple levels of the agriculture and food sectors, including $77 million earmarked to increase capacity and safety at meat-packing plants.

Huber said the closures of the Cargill and JBS meat-packing plants in Alberta due to COVID-19 outbreaks created a major backlog because they normally process approximately 70 per cent of the cattle in Canada.

Huber said $125 million put into the AgriRecovery program for pork and beef producers will likely take too long to help with immediate financial pressures from the backlog in the supply chain.

“With the packing plants not processing beef and the shortage of staff due to COVID, the feedlots in Western Canada aren’t able to deliver kill cattle to these (plants) for kill on their regular basis and allotment as they have in the past,” Huber explained.

He estimates feedlots are now keeping anywhere from 5,000 to 7,000 additional cattle per day that would normally go to these plants.

“What happens then is the feedlots don’t have room to bring any new cattle in. They still have the added cost to keep those cattle in their lots,” Huber said.

Livestock groups have also been pushing for federal support for the price insurance program for cattle producers.

“Insurance due to risk — now the premium on that has gone out of control. It’s way, way higher than it has been in past years,” Huber said.

“We were asking for some support or funding towards that price insurance premium that would definitely help the cow-calf producers in Western Canada. I think that is vital to the whole thing. We need these cow-calf producers to raise the product to get it to market to have processed and supply the food chain.”

— With files from 980 CJME’s Adriana Christianson