Third round of compensation now available for Canadian dairy farmers

Dec 21, 2021

Agriculture and Agri-Food Canada - Today, the Minister of Agriculture and Agri-Food, the Honourable Marie-Claude Bibeau, announced that the third payment under the Dairy Direct Payment Program (DDPP) is now available to producers. The owner of a farm with 80 dairy cows will be awarded compensation in the form of a direct payment of approximately $38,000 each year.

Agriculture and Agri-Food Canada has mailed letters to all eligible dairy producers with directions on how to access the payment. Based on their milk quota, dairy farmers will receive compensation payments totaling up to $469 million for this fiscal year. To receive their payment, producers must register through the Canadian Dairy Commission prior to March 31, 2022. Another $468 million will be available in 2022-2023.

The Government of Canada continues to deliver on its commitment to provide $1.75 billion to dairy producers for market access concessions made under the Canada-European Union Comprehensive Economic and Trade Agreement (CETA) and the Comprehensive and Progressive Agreement for Trans-Pacific Partnership (CPTPP). Payments are being made on an accelerated schedule of four years instead of eight, with all payments set to be made by 2023.

Earlier this year, the Government also launched compensation programs designed to help drive innovation and market development for Canada's 4,800 chicken, egg, broiler hatching egg and turkey producers, totaling $691 million over ten years. The Poultry and Egg On-Farm Investment Program will provide nearly $647 million to support poultry and egg farmers through on-farm investments. The Market Development Program for Turkey and Chicken will provide over $44 million to help increase domestic demand and consumption of Canadian turkey and chicken products through industry-led promotional activities. These programs respond directly to requests from producer associations and provide full and fair compensation for market impacts from the CPTPP.

To help processors of all supply-managed agricultural products adapt to CETA and CPTPP, Budget 2021 proposed a further $292.5 million for a Processor Investment Fund to support private investment in processing plants. Further program details are expected to be available in the coming months.

Within the next year, the Government of Canada is also committed to working with supply-managed sectors to determine full and fair compensation for the impacts of the Canada-United States-Mexico Agreement (CUSMA).

The Government of Canada understands the crucial role of Canada’s supply-managed sectors, which support our family farms and the vitality of our rural communities. Despite many challenges, including the COVID-19 pandemic and impacts of severe weather conditions across the country, these farmers continue to demonstrate their commitment to providing high-quality products and helping to ensure a strong Canadian economy and agriculture sector.

Source : canada

Video: The 15-Year Bet Behind Every New Variety!

Canada is trying to decide how much agricultural research capacity it can afford to lose. Brian Rossnagel believes the better question is whether the country can afford to rebuild it.

The longtime barley and oat breeder makes the case with a simple fact about his profession: the consequences of today’s decisions may not become visible for 10 or 15 years.

“Pick the right parents. That’s the biggest thing,” Rossnagel says. “If you pick the wrong parents, you’re not going to get anywhere—and you don’t know that until 10 years, 15 years later.”

That warning carries particular weight as Agriculture and Agri-Food Canada moves to reduce spending and streamline parts of its science operations. The department’s 2026–27 plan anticipates the loss of approximately 665 positions by 2028–29 and says some research will be reduced where capacity exists in academia or industry. AAFC says the changes will make its science operations more cost-effective over the long term.

For Canada’s seed industry, Rossnagel’s career illustrates what is at stake.

This fall, the retired University of Saskatchewan breeder will be inducted into the Canadian Agricultural Hall of Fame. During his 35-year career at the Crop Development Centre, he helped develop more than 100 barley and oat varieties, including CDC Austenson—one of Western Canada’s most widely grown feed barleys. His induction recognizes not only those varieties, but the collaboration and research system that made them possible.

Rossnagel is quick to emphasize that none of it was the work of one person.

“The first thing I thought about was all the other people who contributed to whatever success I and my program had over the years,” he says. “We know that it’s not an individual who does this. It’s a group—a team.”

That team extends well beyond the breeder whose name appears beside a variety. It includes technicians, pathologists, quality specialists, statisticians, regional testing sites, seed growers and industry partners. It also includes the breeders who came before and those who will carry the germplasm forward.

CDC Fraser barley, for example, moved through three breeding careers. Its parents came from Brian Harvey’s program. Rossnagel advanced the material after Harvey retired, and Aaron Beattie later guided it through registration and release.

That kind of handoff is normal in plant breeding. The person who makes the original cross may never see the resulting variety reach farmers.

It also explains why lost research capacity cannot simply be switched back on when budgets improve.

“If you shut it off, it’s very, very difficult—and particularly costly—to start it up again,” Rossnagel says. “If you have to start from scratch, it’s going to be at least 10 years before anybody notices whether you’re getting anything done or not.”

The concern is not simply how many experimental lines Canada can process. Modern equipment, statistical tools and genetic technologies allow today’s breeding programs to evaluate tens of thousands of lines—far more than Rossnagel could handle when he entered the field in the early 1970s.

But efficiency and automation do not generate every idea.

“If you pare back down, and instead of having six or seven individual scientists concentrating on wheat breeding, you go down and say three people could handle all this, well, that’s half the ideas gone,” he says. “Particularly if you happen to lose the three people who had the really neat and innovative ideas, boy, that’s a problem.”

It is a timely distinction for Canadian agriculture. Consolidating programs may preserve the volume of material moving through a system, at least initially. It may not preserve the diversity of thinking, regional knowledge or willingness to pursue unconventional crosses.

That regional knowledge matters because Canadian agriculture is not one uniform production environment. A variety suited to southern Alberta may face different disease, moisture and maturity pressures than one grown in Manitoba, Ontario or Atlantic Canada.

“Agriculture is applied biology,” Rossnagel says. “Biology, all around the Earth, moves from the poles to the equator. It does not move from Newfoundland to B.C. like politics do.”