Delegates voted to approve five of seven resolutions presented at this week's Keystone Ag Producers 38th annual general meeting. The two day session was held virtually on Tuesday and Wednesday.
As a result, the group has been tasked with:
- lobbying the Government of Canada to treat non-arm’s length transactions the same as arm’s length transactions of farm property transfer for the purposes of valuing for taxation;
- asking the Canadian Food Inspection Agency to have Amaranthus palmeri added as a prohibited noxious weed seed under the Weed Seeds Order;
- requesting Agriculture and Agri-Food Canada to protect the viability of public crop breeding programs by ensuring that AgriScience Clusters provides funding for all crops breeding activities necessary to
bring a new crop variety to market, and that a minimum 70:30 (government-producer) cost share funding ratio is reinstated for smaller acre crops that cannot afford to meet the full cost share ratio;
- working with Agriculture and Agri-Food Canada to ensure federal trade and market development programs meet the needs of smaller acre crops and niche commodities through program changes that provide:
- Funding for domestic market development, including activities to promote the health benefits of agriculture and agri-food products to Canadians;
- Financial assistance to help sectors resolve emerging non-tariff trade restrictions, including technical and political barriers to trade in overseas markets;
- Flexible funding agreements for commodity associations that are unable to meet existing cost-shared funding ratio requirements.
- and increasing access and awareness to pesticide recylcing
A resolution asking KAP to lobby Manitoba Hydro to install natural gas infrastructure at cost to all rural residents, was voted down.
Meantime, the farm lobby group will further review a request titled, Northern Prairie Producer Access to the Port of Churchill.
Presented by District 12, the resolution calls on KAP to lobby for the resumption of grain movement as soon as possible; the development of a long-term arctic bridge strategy that would strengthen the movement of grain and specialty crops to Europe; and work with the consortium group members to ask for more market access when the Port of Churchill reopens for grain shipments in 2023 or 2024.
The resolution was sent to KAP's transportation committee for further examination.
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