Agriculture

One gets the impression that the folks that rule us from faraway Ottawa have nothing better to do than to fight old battles and wallow in contrived scandals.

Recently, the urban media, particularly television news, jumped at the opportunity to engage in sensationalism about an alleged incident at a slaughter facility in Alberta.

In 2009, the Alberta government’s Agriculture Financial Services Corporation (AFSC) marked a record year in serving Albertans, by providing increased access to capital and facilitating a total investment of $686 million in the province’s agriculture, value-added and rural economies.

Hot off cattle industry newslines is a news release about a recent study done on the value of checkoffs.

For most consumers the outbreak of BSE in 2003 has faded from memory. Occasional cases happen, but the food safety process keeps it out of the food chain. BSE never was even remotely a threat to public health in Canada, but because of media fascination with its colloquial name “mad cow disease”, it was blown out of all proportion.

A recent announcement by Agriculture Canada noted that it is budgeting about $30 million to assist the Canadian meat packing industry to meet the extraordinary extra costs of BSE-related regulations imposed by the Canadian Food Inspection Agency (CFIA).

As farmers in the Stettler-area and across the province get ready to seed their crops, parched fields and slumping grain prices are among the biggest risk factors on many producers’ minds, says provincial crop analyst Charlie Pearson.

So Premier Ed Stelmach has decided we need more ridings in rural Alberta in order to maintain a balance with urban Alberta.

Spring means a time to plant seeds, prepare the garden and the start to the much-awaited farmers’ market season in rural Alberta.

Alberta Agriculture recently announced a new grant program for farm safety to the tune of $715,000, part of which will be given to local ag societies.