By Marcia Love
In a year dominated by flooding in Saskatchewan it seems strange to be talking about drought. But that was the topic of discussion at a meeting in Consul last week.
Farmers and ranchers in southwest Saskatchewan are hoping to see assistance from the provincial government for losses due to last year’s drought.
About 20 cattle producers from the RM of Reno gathered in the Consul Community Hall to discuss the eligibility of the Pasture Recovery Initiative on July 19.
The program was developed in May by the federal and provincial governments under AgriRecovery to assist producers affected by the 2009 drought. It is offering compensations such as $50 per head of cattle and $60 per head of horses to producers in eligible rural municipalities. Producers from as far north as the RM of Meadow Lake south to the RM of Lacadena and from the RM of Vanscoy west to the Alberta-Saskatchewan border are eligible for the program.
This has left producers in the Southwest questioning why they do not qualify for federal or provincial assistance for last year’s drought.
NDP Leader Dwain Lingenfelter was the guest speaker of the meeting, and addressed the difficulties faced by ranchers and farmers in the area during the drought.
“Our argument is that the program should be extended to this area – not just for drought but for flooding as well, because in the flooded areas meat producers have every bit as much problem as the people who have drought,” explained Lingenfelter.
Many producers showed their frustrations in not receiving compensation.
“What constitutes as a disaster? There’s got to be something established for the future so we can get something back,” said one rancher from the RM of Reno.   
“I know this area had difficulty growing hay these two years,” noted Paul Heglund, who ranches in the RM of Reno. “We had to either buy (hay) or reduce the herd sizes or both. It wasn’t easy.”
Lingenfelter said the provision of compensation to the west-central part of the province, but not the Southwest is unacceptable.
“You can’t treat one producer in one area a certain way and have another area with basically the same circumstances treated differently,” he said. “There’s no way the drought could have been any worse (in west-central Saskatchewan) than it was in many parts of south Saskatchewan – including southwest – the two years before (this drought).”
MLA Wayne Elhard said the RM of Reno did not qualify for the Pasture Recovery Initiative because the area received more than the minimum amount of rainfall to qualify for the program.
“(The program) was based on the North American Drought Index,” he explained. “We got enough moisture in the deep southwest here to register as not quite a normal rainfall year. The problem for us is that the recorded rainfall came later in the season.”
Although the Southwest was limited in crop growth last year, Elhard said the west-central part of the province was much worse.
“I drove through (the west central) area that was affected and there was nothing growing,” he said. “There’s no question about the lack of precipitation in that area.”
Elhard also noted the Southwest was the first area in the province to see provincial drought assistance. The area received $30 million in compensation after a drought program was formed in 2007. The Pasture Recovery Initiative is worth $20 million.
“It’s not as though our area was ignored, because we were the first beneficiaries of drought programming,” he said. “We’ve got small dams, dugouts and wells for producers and RMs (in the Southwest) that never existed before because of that first program.”
Because the Pasture Recovery Initiative is the first of its kind, Elhard said it may require some improvements.
“There’s going to be some fine-tuning that has to be addressed, and I think as that program is improved we’ll see a much greater responsiveness to various weather-related disasters in the future.”

NDP Leader Dwain Lingenfelter discusses drought compensation with ranchers and farmers from the Southwest during a meeting at Consul on July 19.         Photo by Marcia Love