Eligibility area expansion and deadline extension for 2023 Canada-Saskatchewan Feed Program

Jan 31, 2024

Today, Agriculture and Agri-Food (AAFC) Minister Lawrence MacAulay and Saskatchewan Agriculture Minister David Marit announced updates to Saskatchewan’s 2023 Canada-Saskatchewan Feed Program, administered by the Saskatchewan Crop Insurance Corporation (SCIC).

A total of 10 additional designated Rural Municipalities (RMs) are now added to the area eligible for full cost-shared funding of an initial payment up to $150 per head. This expansion responds to the dry conditions that further impacted livestock producers throughout the later months this past fall.

The application deadline is extended to March 15, 2024. The submitted application needs to indicate the number of breeding animals on hand as of August 21, 2023, and kept until January 31, 2024. This deadline extension allows Saskatchewan producers additional time to review and finalize applications with actual extraordinary costs and breeding animal inventory.

A reminder producers will need to submit their receipts or appropriate documents for the extraordinary expenses. Eligible extraordinary expenses include purchased feed, self-hauling or transportation costs for feed or breeding animals, and/or land rented for additional grazing acres or additional feed production. Eligible animal species include beef cattle and other grazing animals, limited to bison, elk, deer, sheep, goats and horses. A Saskatchewan Premises Identification (PID) is required to be eligible for the Program. This Program covers 70% of extraordinary costs related to feed and freight incurred after May 1, 2023, now through to March 15, 2024.

On August 18, 2023, Saskatchewan’s Ministry of Agriculture announced the province committed up to $70 million to assist impacted producers. Federal cost-share funding for Saskatchewan’s AgriRecovery Program is up to $77 million. AgriRecovery is a federal-provincial-territorial disaster relief framework to help agricultural producers with the extraordinary costs associated with recovering from disaster situations. AgriRecovery initiatives are cost-shared on a 60:40 basis between the federal government and participating provinces or territories, as outlined under the Sustainable Canadian Agricultural Partnership (Sustainable CAP).

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Video: Spring 2026 weather outlook for Wisconsin; What an early-arriving El Niño could mean

Northeast Wisconsin is a small corner of the world, but our weather is still affected by what happens across the globe.

That includes in the equatorial Pacific, where changes between El Niño and La Niña play a role in the weather here -- and boy, have there been some abrupt changes as of late.

El Niño and La Niña are the two phases of what is collectively known as the El Niño Southern Oscillation, or ENSO for short. These are the swings back and forth from unusually warm to unusually cold sea surface temperatures in the Pacific Ocean along the equator.

Since this past September, we have been in a weak La Niña, which means water temperatures near the Eastern Pacific equator have been cooler than usual. That's where we're at right now.

Even last fall, the long-term outlook suggested a return to neutral conditions by spring and potentially El Niño conditions by summer.

But there are some signs this may be happening faster than usual, which could accelerate the onset of El Niño.

Over the last few weeks, unusually strong bursts of westerly winds farther west in the Pacific -- where sea surface temperatures are warmer than average -- have been observed. There is a chance that this could accelerate the warming of those eastern Pacific waters and potentially push us into El Niño sooner than usual.

If we do enter El Nino by spring -- which we'll define as the period of March, April and May -- there are some long-term correlations with our weather here in Northeast Wisconsin.

Looking at a map of anomalously warm weather, most of the upper Great Lakes doesn't show a strong correlation, but in general, the northern tiers of the United States do tend to lean to that direction.

The stronger correlation is with precipitation. El Niño conditions in spring have historically come with a higher risk of very dry weather over that time frame, so this will definitely be a transition we'll have to watch closely as we move out of winter.