Ottawa's management of the Prairie Farm Rehabilitation Administration (PFRA) pastures is going to end in 2018, with the transfer of the first ten pastures going to the Government of Saskatchewan this year. The change in pasture management means that the farmers who depend on these pastures for grazing need to quickly come up with a plan to deal with the changes, and community pasture patron representatives are meeting in Saskatoon to discuss the issue.
This is an issue which affects 2,500 farmers with 200,000 beef cattle, seven to ten per cent of the Saskatchewan cattle herd, says Ian McCreary of the all-patrons steering committee. He says that small to medium-size farms need the grazing land, but now they have to deal with having to purchase the land themselves at market value.
"The issue is that in regions of the province like where we live, mixed farmers depend on that pasture to have a place for those cattle to be during the growing season...
That has always been the service of the PFRA, they always provided that service with professional managers, and they essentially allowed the medium-sized mixed farm to be viable," McCreary says.
The meeting itself is the first step the patrons from the 62 different pastures in the province will have in discussing the next step. McCreary hopes that this will lead to a group getting together to have one voice on pasture problems in the province.
One of the groups speaking at the meeting is from Manitoba, where they have established one patron-run organization to take on the task of managing the pastures, with help from their provincial government.
"There is a lot of risk when you do it one pasture at a time, as opposed to pooling your resources to do it in larger groups. There's some real risk with each one of us negotiating separately," McCreary says.
This is the last growing season for ten of the pastures, and McCreary says they hope to get some more flexibility from the government in order to be able to have more time to work at a solution.
"Small and medium size cattle producers are fighting for grass, and at this point there isn't a clear path by which we can be guaranteed to have it a year from now."
McCreary says that the PFRA managed these pastures for 75 years, the pasture lands not only helped farmers, but some at-risk species that depend on the habitat.
He says their management was important for protecting land which is part of the fabric of provincial life, and it should not have been disbanded.
"The federal government did this with such haste and with no plan in mind, that patrons were left in a bind situation, where they were told that they were to take on all the risks with these community pastures."
"The federal government proceeded to end it with no consultation, no statement as to what their purpose was, it's just another one of those items Canadians saw thrown into one of those horrible omnibus budget bills."
