Key funding for Alberta's agriculture sector

Mar 01, 2022

For the first time in ten years, Alberta is looking at a balanced budget for the year ahead.

The Province is forecasting a $500 million dollar surplus for 2022 the increase in revenues mainly due to the increase in oil prices.

Agriculture Minister Nate Horner says as part of Alberta's Recovery Plan they are working to attract $1.4 billion in investment, creating more than 2000 jobs in emerging sectors like hemp, agtech and value-added processing by 2023-24.

Included in the 2022 Ag Budget is $3.7 million for producer driven research thru the Results Driven Agriculture Research program with a goal for the ag sector to improve productivity, profitability, competitiveness and sustainability.

There's also $15 million dollars for the Investment and Growth fund to create a new rural investment attraction stream to attract investment and create jobs, the funding coming through the Alberta at Work Investment Fund.

The Province also tackling the growing concern around the shortage of large animal vets by investing $59 million over the next three years to expand the Veterinary School at the University of Calgary.

Horner says great things are happening.

"To date, our $1.4 billion investment targeted toward value-added processing has led to 2,128 new jobs and $886 million in new investments."

He notes they thought the funding would create more than 2000 jobs over the entire project and are already past that initial estimate.

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Video: Learning to Wrench From Dad the Hard Way

Harvest is a week out and the farm picked this week to fall apart. The truck needs a battery, the barn curtain's got a problem, and the corn and beans are telling us we're out of time to get it all fixed.

So it's a full day of wrenching. Tork supervises while I get the truck back running, then we're out at the hog barn where one rusted up part has the whole curtain system hung up. Ladder work, cable work, and a little dad-and-son disagreement about the right way to do it. We close it out walking the fields, shelling beans and checking corn, because whether everything's fixed or not, harvest starts when harvest starts.

Chapters: 00:00 Everything breaks the week before harvest 01:00 Tork supervises while I fix the truck 12:30 Out to the barn to find the curtain problem 14:30 One rusty part hung up the whole curtain 20:00 Running the curtain cable from the ladder 24:00 Walking the beans and corn before harvest 26:30 Wrapping up

We're a 6th generation family farm in southeast Iowa showing the real ups and downs of pig farming and row crop farming. No script, just the work. Subscribe and follow along.

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