By Alice McFarlane

Agriculture Roundup for Friday December 3, 2021

Dec 3, 2021 | 10:08 AM

MELFORT, Sask. — The federal and Manitoba governments have created a breeding herd buy-back for producers who had to sell animals due to drought.

The AgriRecovery program was announced in August when both governments created disaster relief funding for the transport of animals and feed.

Agriculture and Agri-Food Minister Marie-Claude Bibeau said the Herd Management Drought Assistance program will help livestock producers offset the costs associated with replacing breeding animals culled due to shortages of winter feed.

“My heart goes out to Manitoba ranchers, some of whom I visited this past summer, who were forced to send their breeding herds to market, selling genetics developed over generations at a fraction of their worth,” Bibeau said “Through this program and other initiatives, we are helping farmers bounce back from the drought and build the resiliency needed to be sustainable in the face of climate change.”

Eligible animals include breeding females of beef cattle, bison, sheep, goats and elk. Producers must be supporting a minimum of 10 animals to qualify for assistance.

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This program will assist producers to replace breeding females to pre-drought levels. The replacement animals can be purchased or retained from the producer’s existing herds or flocks. Payments are determined by the increase in the inventory of breeding females, with payments capped once inventories are restored to pre-drought levels.

Application is a two-step process which starts with producers submitting their pre-drought and drought-affected inventories of breeding females. Forms for submitting these breeding animal numbers will be available in January 2022. Starting on Dec. 1, 2022, producers will be able to submit information on their breeding animal inventories post-drought. Payments will be issued after the post-drought inventory is submitted.

More detailed program information can be found here.

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Livestock and poultry producers now have access to enhanced disease prediction and movement mapping.

Farm Health Guardian is a new mapping feature to help producers manage their biosecurity risks with geographic and environmental prediction factors to establish disease quarantine zones and send messages to the people and farms that might be at risk.

Farm Health Guardian CEO Rob Hannam said animal diseases can easily be spread by vectors like trucks, people and even the wind.

“Combining this enhanced mapping tool with the Farm Health Protect biosecurity platform, we can help producers who manage multiple production facilities to reduce the risk of disease spread amongst their barns,” he said.

The biosecurity management system automatically and confidentially records the movement of trucks and people on and off farm properties for rapid contact tracing in the event of a suspected disease outbreak. The biosecurity system provides real-time access to integrated data, so if a disease outbreak is suspected, the production system can instantly generate risk-based reports and immediately contact the people, farms and vehicles that might be at risk.

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Representatives of the PEI Potato Board travelled to Ottawa to meet with federal officials to discuss an ongoing U.S. trade issue.

On Nov. 22, Canadian Food Inspection Agency’s (CFIA) banned the sale of table potatoes to the U.S. due to the presence of potato wart, pinning the temporary decision on broader Canada-U.S. trade relation concerns.

PEI Potato Board general manager Greg Donald said discussions centered on a timeline and a plan to get the border open.

“Ultimately, we’re talking about a perishable product that needs to get to market, now,” Donald said.

Potato wart is a soil-borne fungus that can lay dormant for decades. PEI has an ongoing surveillance and management protocol for the tuber-disfiguring disease.

While potato wart poses no risk to human or animal health it downgrades the potato crop and reduces marketability.

Prince Edward Island is the largest potato producing province in Canada, growing one-quarter of the country’s potatoes. The PEI Potato Board estimates that more than 300 million pounds of potatoes are stranded on the island due to the closure.

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alice.mcfarlane@pattisonmedia.com

On Twitter: @farmnewsNOW