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By Pattison Media

Farmers share their wishes for the agriculture and agri-food sector

Mar 27, 2026 | 10:03 AM

The next five-year Agricultural Policy Framework (APF) will take effect on April 2028 and continue until March 2033.  

The plan is to have a policy statement ready by the federal, provincial and territorial agriculture ministers meeting in Halifax in July. Early indications are there will be a greater emphasis on economic growth and producer profitability and less on environmental sustainability. 

The Agricultural Producers Association of Saskatchewan hosted a summit on the new APF on Wednesday in Saskatoon, Sask. The event wrapped up with a producer panel where each participant was asked what they wanted to see included in the new APF.  

Trevor Green, a livestock producer from the Moosomin area, said he would like to see an emphasis on food sovereignty. He believes there are many ways to expand value added processing of Saskatchewan products.  

“Like beef, for instance, we don’t have enough kill plants to buy beef locally. We don’t have enough pork plants to buy pork locally. We’re importing lettuce and tomatoes from Arizona when we have one of the largest greenhouses in Saskatchewan growing trees, which blows my mind,” Green said. “We have an AI data center coming to Regina that’s going to have lots of waste heat. Why are there not greenhouses on that new property growing food? If we can grow more food in this province, I think we’re better off and I’d like to see some funding go towards that.”  

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Fillmore area grain producer Chris Procyk focused on succession planning.  He said there is a lot of farmland and businesses that need to transition to the next generation in the next five to seven years.  

“To me, that’s something we’ve talked about, but we’ve never actually done anything meaningful about it. That’s going to be huge,” Procyk said.  

There was discussion at the daylong event about investments in technology, but, Procyk said agriculture needs to be at the forefront of the provincial economy.  

We’re not just an industry; we’re an economic driver provincially and federally. We need to look at ag as a driver of the economy. Let’s invest in ag instead of looking at how much of this piece of the pie are we going to carve up, let’s make the pie bigger. The best thing to do is put money in a farmer’s hand because we’ll spend it.” 

An Ituna area cattle and grain farmer emphasized the importance of business risk management programs, not only for the grain sector but for cattle producers as well. Adrienne Ivey said there is a great deal of fear and uncertainty around trade and exports. 

“That weighs on farmers’ minds. I think that the livestock industry, here in Saskatchewan specifically, is so determined by a very select few companies set our fat cattle market prices,” Ivey said. “That is a giant risk to our industry and something that I have no doubt will eventually burst this high price bubble that we’re currently enjoying.” 

Ivey added that AgriStability is not an easy program to understand but after investigating further, she believes it is valuable. She also gave high marks to AgriInvest calling it a self-directed program that is left up to the individual farmer and is easy to administer and at a relatively low cost.

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alice.mcfarlane@pattisonmedia.com