Tax relief for Prairie livestock producers facing the impacts of extreme weather

Aug 30, 2022

Ottawa, Ontario – Agriculture and Agri-Food Canada

Canadian farmers are directly impacted by climate change and its effects can be detrimental to sustaining operations. To provide assurance for producers as they make difficult herd management decisions, today the Minister of Agriculture and Agri-Food, the Honourable Marie-Claude Bibeau, announced an initial list of designated regions in Alberta, Saskatchewan and Manitoba where Livestock Tax Deferral has been authorized for 2022 due to extreme weather conditions.

The Livestock Tax Deferral provision allows livestock producers who are forced to sell a significant amount of their breeding herd due to drought or flooding to defer a portion of their income from sales until the following tax year. The income may be at least partially offset by the cost of reacquiring breeding animals, thereby reducing the potential tax burden associated with the original sale.

Eligible regions have been identified based on weather, climate and production data, in consultation with industry and provinces. The criteria for identifying regions for Livestock Tax Deferral includes forage shortfalls of 50% or more caused by drought or excess moisture. The Government of Canada will continue to monitor conditions across the country to determine whether the addition of other regions throughout the year are required.

In addition to the Livestock Tax Deferral provision, producers have access to a comprehensive suite of Business Risk Management (BRM) programs to help them manage significant risks that threaten the viability of their farm and are beyond their capacity to manage. BRM programs are often the first line of support for producers facing disasters and farmers are encouraged to make use of these programs to protect their farming operations.

To help farm families succeed in a changing climate, the Government of Canada will continue to support farmers with the tools they need to get through the challenges of today, while working to build a sustainable future for the agriculture sector in Canada.

Source : Canada.ca

Video: Wheat Yields in USA and China Threatened by Heat Waves Breaking Enzymes

A new peer reviewed study looks at the generally unrecognized risk of heat waves surpassing the threshold for enzyme damage in wheat.

Most studies that look at crop failure in the main food growing regions (breadbaskets of the planet) look at temperatures and droughts in the historical records to assess present day risk. Since the climate system has changed, these historical based risk analysis studies underestimate the present-day risks.

What this new research study does is generate an ensemble of plausible scenarios for the present climate in terms of temperatures and precipitation, and looks at how many of these plausible scenarios exceed the enzyme-breaking temperature of 32.8 C for wheat, and exceed the high stress yield reducing temperature of 27.8 C for wheat. Also, the study considers the possibility of a compounded failure with heat waves in both regions simultaneously, this greatly reducing global wheat supply and causing severe shortages.

Results show that the likelihood (risk) of wheat crop failure with a one-in-hundred likelihood in 1981 has in today’s climate become increased by 16x in the USA winter wheat crop (to one-in-six) and by 6x in northeast China (to one-in-sixteen).

The risks determined in this new paper are much greater than that obtained in previous work that determines risk by analyzing historical climate patterns.

Clearly, since the climate system is rapidly changing, we cannot assume stationarity and calculate risk probabilities like we did traditionally before.

We are essentially on a new planet, with a new climate regime, and have to understand that everything is different now.