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By Alice McFarlane

Dairy Compensation

Prairie farm group upset with payout to dairy sector

Aug 19, 2019 | 2:38 PM

The Western Canadian Wheat Growers (WCWG) were stunned to see Agriculture Minister Marie-Claude Bibeau delivered another $1.75 billion to the supply management sector.

This brings the total funding to over $5.75 billion.

WCWG President Gunter Jochum said dairy farmers in Quebec are receiving funding while grain farmers were only offered ways to increase their farm debt through the Advanced Payment Programs.

“It’s a bit of a slap in our face to say the least. I mean, Western Canadian farmers and grain farmers in general are having all kinds of problems getting our grain to market, trade agreements have been broken and nothing is being done in fixing those trade agreements,” Jochum said. “And then we have a government that hands out billions of dollars to one sector of the ag industry. So, it looks like they’re cherry picking. The ag ministers riding is full of dairy farmers. This plays right into her playbook.”

“I doesn’t show a lot of good will on the part of the ag minister and the federal government in trying to work out the problems grain farmers in Canada are having. Just looking after one sector of farmers is not really playing out very well at all,” Jochum said. “It is very divisive and I can’t see it helping her cause or helping the federal government’s cause. It angered a lot of farmers across Canada and it has made very few farmers happy. I’m not even sure dairy farmers are necessarily elated over this announcement.”

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Jochum said over the past 36 months, grain farmers have seen several non-tariff barriers.

“The government needs to help farmers in general when there is problems. Right now grain farmers have been facing trade disputes with India, China, Peru, Italy, just to name a few countries and it seems like very little is being done on those fronts and if they want to make inroads with farmers in Canada they better get on the ball in trying to fix those problems,” Jochum said.

WCWG has estimated the grain market losses for the past three years to reach almost $4 billion.

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alice.mcfarlane@jpbg.ca

On Twitter: @AliceMcF