With only three weeks away to the Canadian federal election, the Agricultural Producers Association of Saskatchewan (APAS) are ensuring that agriculture is top of mind for campaigning parties by announcing a new strategic agenda called Unleashing Agriculture for Canada's Growth. Jeremy Welter, vice-president with APAS, talks about the need to improve Canadian agriculture and make it a point of focus for the federal government.
“There's obviously a couple of key things that certainly could be done. Obviously, one of the biggest and most impactful is a national logistics plan. We are an export-oriented nation, we're incredibly wealthy in natural resources and that includes all of our agriculture production and in the last number of years we have encountered a number of challenges in getting our products to market."
By improving our logistics in our nation's transportation and logistics infrastructure and improving transportation to railways, ports, and highways, we can ensure that our product reliably gets to export markets which makes Canada a good partner to buy grains and oilseeds from. Welter talks about how important our export markets are to our economy.
“The reason we went with (the title) Unleashing Agriculture for Canada’s Growth, one in nine jobs in Canada are in agriculture. It's a $150 billion a year industry nationally. It’s a question of strategically planning to make sure that when agriculture is successful, the rest of the country can really share in that success and take advantage of the success of that one aspect of our economy.”
Alongside improving transportation, APAS have tabled a variety of key factors for Canadian agriculture; the advancement of finance and tax policy, regulatory agency competitiveness, modernization of grain services, rail freight policy reform, national supply chain and data strategy, and animal and soil health policies.
You can read the full PDF file from APAS’s strategic agenda below, and for more information about APAS, visit their website at apas.ca