The Government of Saskatchewan is looking to assist farmers in their time of need as drought conditions worsen for much of the southern half of the province.
“I actually drove quite a bit of the south the last few weeks and just saw the deterioration is quite severe,” Minister of Agriculture David Marit told CTV Morning Live.
“You take the southern part and the west side and up towards Kindersley. There are some pockets where there's virtually nothing and it's pretty serious.”
According to Marit the province sent a letter a week ago – requesting federal assistance in supporting farming operations experiencing drought.
“We're just down at FPT [federal, provincial, and territorial] meetings last week in New Brunswick and had the discussion with the federal minister. We're just doing our assessment now … along with the federal government,” he said.
“[We’ll] hopefully have that done by the end of this week. If we do it and then we'll just wait and see what programs we can do – if there's something we can do to help the cattle guys with some feed situations.”
When asked if current drought conditions qualify as a national emergency; Marit said its close.
“I think it's close in areas, it is,” he said. “I talked to my colleague from Alberta the other day when we were at FPT and they're in the same situation in central Alberta as well.”
Marit said collaboration with the other provinces, such as Alberta, and the federal government, is ongoing.
“The ministries are working together to say ‘okay, if we're going to do something for the ranchers, especially on the feed side, what are we going to do to help them? Hopefully, we can collaborate together with the federal government of course,” he said.
Regardless of the drought issues, Marit says he still has confidence in Saskatchewan’s ability to draw investment related to agriculture.
“[It’s] because the way we're doing it quite frankly, it's the way our farmers and ranchers have adapted to everything. We are leading the world in innovation and research,” he said.
“We do crop rotation – when you look at what's happened here in the last 30 years in this province, where we've gone from usually half and half farming for over 95 per cent of the land now is zero till or minimum till.”
With files from CTV Morning Live.
