Federal and provincial agriculture ministers were at a Ladner farm Tuesday morning to announce funding to help some B.C. farmers recover after last years disastrous fall.
Federal minister of agriculture Gerry Ritz and Don McRae, B.C. minister of agriculture, announced up to $5 million for two new AgriRecovery initiatives aimed at B.C. vegetable, cattle and bison producers.
The 2011 Canada-B.C. Excess Moisture Initiative includes $175 per acre for potato and vegetable growers in the Lower Mainland and on Vancouver Island that were impacted by last falls excessive rains.
Richmond Centre MLA Rob Howard was on hand for the announcement.
Even my great city of Richmond is impacted here as you know.
Almost 40 percent of Richmond is in the land reserve, some 12,000 acres under the land reserve. Its just, again, evidence of how this important announcement will reach every corner of the province.
Torrential rainfall throughout September left many farmers unable to harvest crops from saturated fields.
The funding can be used to help with the cost of restoring water-damaged cropland as well as the disposal of spoiled product in storage and the cleaning and disinfecting of storage facilities.
B.C. growers and cattlemen are working hard to rebuild after damage caused by extreme weather last fall and into this spring, including flooding, drought and wildfires, Ritz said.
Our governments are working together to ensure vegetable and livestock producers can deal with the prolonged impacts of these events and get back to what they do best deliver top quality products to consumers here in Canada and around the world.
Many local farmers were left in financial dire straits after last falls flooding. Some did have crop insurance, however that only covers 30 per cent of the farmers input costs. The province is committed to working with the federal government to ensure B.C.s farming and ranching families have access to programs that protect them from economic hardship due to adverse weather conditions like flooding and drought, McRae said.
While glad to see some assistance from the two levels of government, some farmers were saying its not enough.
We were hoping for something, said longtime farmer Peter Guichon following the announcement. I think we thought it might be a little more than that, but, having said that, somethings better than nothing.
Guichon added that farmers were happy to see government listening to farmers. Anything above nothing is helpful, said Delta councillor, and farmer, Ian Paton, adding that the funding is based on the number of acres being planted this year.
In the big scheme of things, in government now a days we deal in billions of dollars with different things and $5 million is pretty small potatoes, to put it that way. I dont want to be critical of the federal government but $175 an acre couldnt even buy you a ton of fertilizer.
