The Saskatchewan Provincial election is just a week away, with the province's parties looking at what they can do for the agriculture sector.
That includes working with other provinces and the federal government and responding to disaster years such as the droughts that have come up through the 2020s.
Trent Wotherspoon is one provincial candidate, who served as the Saskatchewan NDP's official critic for agriculture, finance, and transportation during his previous term.
During his reelection, Wotherspoon says that agriculturally Saskatchewans stands tall in the country.
"I mean, we have a world-class ag sector. We have world-leading producers who lead the way, an incredible Agribusiness and research community in this province. So we really are the envy of the world and we play such an important role in feeding the world. So we need to make sure that agriculture is always positioned for incredible success today and for the long term on that front."
To that end, Wotherspoon says that the Saskatchewan NDP would call for a number of improvements for the sector.
"We would like to make sure that we build and improve livestock business risk management programs to ensure fairness, protection and flexibility for producers. Livestock producers have definitely dealt with protracted drought in many areas. They've dealt with unfairness when it comes to meat pricing and what they deserve is a solid backstop and fairness."
"The reality right now is that you have a program like livestock price insurance, which is a good program. But it doesn't receive provincial or federal contributions to the premiums and that's a matter of fairness that should be addressed. We've pushed for a long time for that to become a national program and for federal and provincial contributions to be there as well, to make sure that livestock producers have a backstop that they can count on, and this positions them well into the future, including dealing with pressures around drought."
Additionally, Wotherspoon says he hopes to see an expanded industry in Saskatchewan which would help out the ag sector.
"We're also pushing for the development of a larger meat processing industry in Saskatchewan, creates jobs and opportunities across our province and in rural communities, creates opportunities and value for livestock producers in this province and also creates a product that consumers can be very proud of."
"To do that, we need to crack down and address the anti-competitive behaviours of the meat packing industry. For example, that's a duopoly consolidated out of province in Alberta and we need to work to make sure that we have competition and fairness on this front to be able to build up meat processing in this province."
On the environmental side of the industry, Wotherspoon hopes that a Saskatchewan NDP government could help to give farmers the credit they deserve.
"We'd also like to properly recognize the role that ranchers and producers play in protecting grasslands and wetlands, for example, as stewards of the land and develop a carbon offset program that compensates producers for their role in carbon sequestration."
"The unfortunate reality right now is that you have producers and agriculture that takes the hit with the federal carbon tax, something that we don't support and something that we're calling for an end to and have for years. But then you have producers that take that hit but don't get compensated for their important role as stewards of the land."
One policy that the Saskatchewan NDP would press into action would be taking a look at illegal foreign ownership of farmland.
That would include establishing a registry and giving the Farmland Security Board more tools to enforce the laws.
As well, Wotherspoon says that under a Saskatchewan NDP government SaskTel would work on connecting rural areas to faster internet.