Finance Minister Travis Toews (far left), Farmer Bruce McDonald (centre left) Agriculture and Forestry Minister (right centre) making grain dryer announcement at Heads Farm in Clairmont. Photo Credit: Shane Clausing

By Shane Clausing

Agriculture

Provincial government announces new grain dryer program for farmers

Feb 10, 2020 | 2:08 PM

The provincial government announced a new Grain Dryer Program for farmers Monday morning in Clairmont.

Two-million dollars from the five-year, $3 billion-dollar Canadian Agricultural Partnership that runs until 2023 between the provincial and federal governments, will allow farmers in Alberta to make improvements to their grain dryers with the governments picking up half the cost.

The program will also be retroactive to April 1, 2018, to accommodate nearly 100 applicants who have been waiting since then and for those who may not have known about the program and purchased eligible equipment in the last two years.

“Why we wanted it to be retroactive is because there’s been so many farmers that have been making changes to their grain dryers in the past, especially up in this region (Peace Region) where you’ve had three or four really bad harvests. Farmers have already been investing in grain dryers, so we really want to make sure that they can actually benefit from this program as well,” said Agriculture and Forestry Minister Devin Dreeshen.

The conversation about the program began a couple of weeks ago at a farmer’s roundtable just outside of Grande Prairie, that Forestry and Agriculture Minister Dreeshen, Finance Minister Tavis Toews, and MLA Tracy Allard attended.

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One concern that they heard was about getting help for funding new grain drying equipment.

“Grain drying now, it seems, is part of the regular routine in farming. To be able to recognize that and to be able to help out as much as a government could, is something that we thought would be a good idea to introduce as a new program,” said Dreeshen.

Dreeshen is also hoping that within the next two weeks, payments could go to those applicants who applied for the program back in 2018.

“We’ve had four or five very tough years in the grain farming industry in this region, which is unusual for this part of the world,” said Toews. “So, producers are challenged with dealing with tough grain and challenged with the cost of drying grain and this program will go some distance to assisting them to ensure they got the infrastructure of their farms so that they can deal with these tough weather challenges.”

Information on how to apply for the program can be found here.