Sometimes even uneventful news events reveal something eventful.
Last week's mid-year update for the 2011-12 budget was just such an event, one that told us little we already didn't suspect about our finances, but something interesting about the changing face of farming.
Finance Minister Ken Krawetz revealed a modest $25-million surplus in the general revenue fund budget, the part that includes just the taxes and royalties we collect versus the departmental spending. Add in the Crown corporations and we have a slightly bothersome $ 81-million deficit.
As we all surely expected, the problem has been spring flooding that cost us about $240 million extra in crop insurance, road repair, etc. However, the increased flooding costs were partially offset by an extra $106 million from the federal government that is paying its share of flood assistance and jointly shared programs like crop insurance.
Moreover, overall government spending only increased $247 million since the March budget plan, a modest amount considering the flooding bill.
And also to no one's surprise, oil revenue and land-lease sales were down because of lower oil prices and tougher drilling conditions in the wet spring. This, in turn, is producing less corporate tax revenue. However, potash recovering in both prices and sales allowed the province produce an extra $157 million in revenue.
Yes, it's a little worrisome that we seem to be just scraping by at a time of near-record prosperity for the government. At the very least, it's a sign that we are spending too much and should be putting more aside for those literal rainy days. But as mid-year financial statements go, Krawetz's news last week was comparatively uneventful.
However, that didn't make it completely uninteresting. A couple very interesting numbers revealed during the technical briefing with reporters said a lot about farming.
Finance Ministry officials explained that there study of Saskatchewan employment (one of the many things finance keeps track of so that it has a more exact idea of how much income and other tax they will be collecting) showed that the province has only created 1,600 jobs so far, significantly down from the 6,000 new jobs that it predicted by fiscal year's end.
But while overall job creation was off, finance took solace in a 4,000-job increase in "non-agriculture" jobs. This means that much of the job-loss centred on agriculture. Had farm employment been more stable, officials speculated, Saskatchewan job creation would clearly have been on track.
Of course, officials attributed this directly to the wet spring that meant less seeding, less people employed at harvest and, generally, less people employed on the farm.
Such numbers are telling on a couple of accounts
First, it does show how vulnerable rural Saskatchewan's economy is to weather, especially when the weather also affects things like oil drilling.
Second, it shows how vulnerable farming is for some and perhaps how easily some farmers are simply converting to other forms of income. (That increase in non-agricultural jobs may has to be at least partly attributed to those who once got their income primarily from farming now getting it from another kind of work.)
Third, it probably tells us something about the changing face of agriculture. That seemingly smaller operators are more frequently slipping out of agriculture into more lucrative employment, might also say much about how why the federal Conservative government has eagerly pushed through its legislation to end the Canadian Wheat Board's monopoly.
While a majority of farmers (those with permit books) may have voted to keep the CWB, it may be that many of the smaller producers aren't as dependent on the land for the bulk of their income. They may be unhappy about the CWB's potential demise, but these farmers may be phasing out of farming, anyway.
It's just one of the many things one can learn from a seemingly uneventful news event.
