By Alice McFarlane

Agriculture Roundup for Thursday January 28, 2021

Jan 28, 2021 | 10:41 AM

MELFORT, Sask. – It’s Bell Let’s Talk Day.

The federal agriculture minister is encouraging the agriculture sector to speak up about mental health.

Marie-Claude Bibeau said in recent months many people have experienced psychological distress.

“Farming is seven days a week. Farmers are often isolated, and they are used to taking a lot on their shoulders,” Bibeau said. “In this time of crisis, we need to support each other more than ever before, while remembering to take care of ourselves first.”

Bibeau said we always think everything is fine and we can get by on our own, but sometimes talking can make all the difference.

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She said take advantage of Bell Let’s Talk Day to invite conversations on mental health by contacting a friend, neighbour or distant relative to talk about life and use social media to break the stigma.

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The opposition NDP said its past time for the Saskatchewan Party government to step up and fix AgriStability to make the program work for producers.

Agriculture Critic Trent Wotherspoon said with a end of January deadline looming its time for the government to step up and support the proposed changes to increase AgriStability payment levels to 80 per cent and remove the reference margin limit.

He said the proposed changes are supported by Saskatchewan agriculture groups.

Wotherspoon added the changes would be cost shared 60/40 by the federal and provincial governments and be retroactive for the 2020 year if the changes are accepted.

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The Omics and Precision Agricultural Laboratory (OPAL) has been launched by the Global Institute for Food Security (GIFS) at the University of Saskatchewan (USask).

It was designed to help farmers target plants with precise amounts of inputs.

OPAL brings together analytics and agriculture technology under one roof and was founded by Agriculture and Agri-Food Canada, the National Research Council of Canada, and USask with investment from Western Economic Diversification Canada.

The state-of-the-art facility is the only one of its kind in Canada with a focus on the study of genetic materials, an organism’s traits, and analyses of biological data.

It also uses the latest imaging and ag technologies like GPS, unmanned aerial vehicles, remote aerial imagery, and in-field environmental monitoring to provide clients with a complete diagnostic profile of samples.

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alice.mcfarlane@jpbg.ca

On Twitter: @AliceMcF