Key funding for Alberta's agriculture sector

For the first time in ten years, Alberta is looking at a balanced budget for the year ahead.

The Province is forecasting a $500 million dollar surplus for 2022 the increase in revenues mainly due to the increase in oil prices.

Agriculture Minister Nate Horner says as part of Alberta's Recovery Plan they are working to attract $1.4 billion in investment, creating more than 2000 jobs in emerging sectors like hemp, agtech and value-added processing by 2023-24.

Included in the 2022 Ag Budget is $3.7 million for producer driven research thru the Results Driven Agriculture Research program with a goal for the ag sector to improve productivity, profitability, competitiveness and sustainability.

There's also $15 million dollars for the Investment and Growth fund to create a new rural investment attraction stream to attract investment and create jobs, the funding coming through the Alberta at Work Investment Fund.

The Province also tackling the growing concern around the shortage of large animal vets by investing $59 million over the next three years to expand the Veterinary School at the University of Calgary.

Horner says great things are happening.

"To date, our $1.4 billion investment targeted toward value-added processing has led to 2,128 new jobs and $886 million in new investments."

He notes they thought the funding would create more than 2000 jobs over the entire project and are already past that initial estimate.