Alta. ag minister talks 2020 budget

Mar 05, 2020

Creating jobs is a major focus for Alberta, Devin Dreeshen said

By Diego Flammini
Staff Writer
Farms.com

Alberta’s provincial government is focused on attracting investment and creating jobs.

That’s one of the messages Agriculture and Forestry Minister Devin Dreeshen conveyed to Farms.com during an interview Thursday about the province’s second budget under Premier Jason Kenney.

“This is a jobs and economic growth budget,” Dreeshen said. “We have a really high-level goal within the department of trying to attract $1.4 billion of new agriculture value-added investment to the province of Alberta. We’ve estimated that 2,000 net new jobs will come from that investment.”

The jobs would also contribute to rural revitalization, he said.

Employment opportunities will be primarily in the canola processing, pork, plant protein, greenhouse, food processing, malt and agri-technology sectors, the budget document states.

Government will study all sectors within the agricultural industry to determine where the most job opportunities are, Dreeshen said.

“We have an investment team within our department to identify … what type of investment could actually come to the province and expand in all the different commodity areas,” he said.

Alberta’s ag ministry is reducing its own spending.

The department will be allotted $833 million in 2020-21, down from $879 million in the 2019-20 budget.

Taking a different approach to operating provincial ministries and making necessary changes will help ensure Alberta is fiscally responsible, Dreeshen said.

“We’re still spending $833 million, and we think the efficiencies we found in last year’s budget was kind of a transformational view of how we can run the department like a business,” he said. “In so many ways we are service providers to farmers and ranchers and on the forestry wide as well, so we wanted to figure out how we could actually streamline our services going out.”

Despite some spending cuts, Alberta is committed to funding farmer-led research.

The United Conservative Party’s fiscal plan maintains $37 million in funding for the research in 2020-21 and through years three and four of its mandate, Dreeshen said.

Agriculture and Forestry Minister Devin Dreeshen

Video: Evolution of Beef Cattle Farming

The Clear Conversations podcast took to the road for a special episode recorded in Nashville during CattleCon, bringing listeners straight into the heart of the cattle industry. Host Tracy Sellers welcomed rancher Steve Wooten of Beatty Canyon Ranch in Colorado for a wide-ranging discussion that blended family history and sustainability, particularly as it relates to the future of beef production.

Sustainability emerged as a central theme of the conversation, a word that Wooten acknowledges can mean very different things depending on who you ask. For him, sustainability starts with the soil. Healthy soil produces healthy grass, which supports efficient cattle capable of producing year after year with minimal external inputs. It’s an approach that equally considers vegetation, animal efficiency, and long-term profitability.

That philosophy aligned naturally with Wooten’s involvement in the U.S. Roundtable for Sustainable Beef, where he served as a representative for the Colorado Cattlemen’s Association. The roundtable brings together the entire beef supply chain—from producers to retailers—along with universities, NGOs, and allied industries. Its goal is not regulation, Wooten emphasized, but collaboration, shared learning, and continuous improvement.