Agriculture policies were on the agenda of the Agricultural Producers Association of Saskatchewan meetings in North Battleford last week.
The meetings Nov. 1 at Don Ross Centre were among four fall district meetings scheduled by the organization. The North Battleford meeting included representatives from District 6; the other meetings were held in Moose Jaw, Leroy and Wolseley.
Norm Hall, president of APAS, said his organization is the general farm organization in Saskatchewan, representing producers.
"We do ag policy 24/7", said Hall, "We don't dabble in anything else but ag policy."
Their membership consists of rural municipalities joining on behalf of their ratepayers, and then they come together and talk about policy, he said.
Changes coming to business risk management programs under Growing Forward 2, the five-year policy framework that will be in place April 1 came up for discussion. Divesture and sale of community pastureland by the federal government was another hot topic.
The pastureland issue was discussed at length by Doug Faller as well as Joanne Brochu, a farmer who has been actively raising awareness of the issue.
Hall says the sale of community pastureland is not going down well with producers.
"We really haven't found any producers that want to see them sold," said Hall.
"They want to keep them in public ownership, as well as some sort of public management system as well, whether that be the current community pasture program or some other form of public management. But they don't want to see them broken up and sold as individual lots."
Hall noted many cattle producers are getting up in age and not looking to add to their equity to buy pasture land.
"What they want to do is maintain the system as they go forward into the future."
There are also a lot of unanswered questions, he said, about the pastures being sold.
Another issue involved the federal business risk management programs, particularly AgriStability and AgriInvest. Hall made note of the controversy this summer in Whitehorse, Yukon where provincial agriculture minister Lyle Stewart made clear his disgust over the behind-the-scenes deal making that produced the federal-provincial agreement on Growing Forward 2, along with a 33 per cent cut to AgriInvest in the agreement that Stewart didn't like.
Hall told the reps at the North Battleford meeting that Stewart had no choice but to sign the agreement - that it was a done deal by the other provinces before Saskatchewan got there.
The cut to AgriInvest will be a "big hit" to Saskatchewan producers, Hall contends.
"Ninety-three per cent of Saskatchewan producers are involved and there's a 33 per cent cut to that program," said Hall of AgriInvest. "There's been $100 million cut from the program in Saskatchewan."
Both APAS and the Saskatchewan government had been pushing for a stronger AgriInsurance and AgriInvest, Hall says. Hall believes it would eliminate the need for AgriStability, a BRM program that provides support when producers are hit with huge financial losses.
"With a strong enough livestock and crop insurance, we wouldn't need a program like AgriStability, which is not transparent, it's not bankable, it's not predictable and it's very costly to administer, both at the farm side and on the government side. What the government and APAS have been saying is get rid of AgriStability over a few years and take all the money saved, and strengthen the AgriInsurance and beef up AgriInvest as well."
In addition to policy, there was discussion of how APAS should proceed in coming years. One topic discussed at the North Battleford meeting was a review of their draft Strategic Plan to cover the 2013-17 period.
The draft is to be presented at the next major event coming up for APAS later this year -their annual general meeting. That meeting will be in Regina Dec. 5 to 7.
