New Brunswick’s agriculture department will put up $1 million in further funding for a pair of programs to help farmers buy “genetically superior” breeding livestock and develop new farmland.
The province’s Livestock Genetic Enhancement Initiative has so far resulted in over 3,500 breeding heifers being added or retained in the province’s beef herds between April 1, 2007, and March 31 this year, the government said in a release Tuesday.
“In the beef sector, this has resulted in the rejuvenation and stabilization of the beef breeding herd,” Agriculture Minister Ron Ouellette said.
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Beef producers this spring were able to use program funds to run genetic evaluations and buy “top quality” bulls at the breeding stock auction sale at the Maritime Beef Test Station.
“Since 1967, Nova Scotia has traditionally consigned 60 per cent of the bulls per year to the Maritime Beef Test Station; New Brunswick has consigned 30 per cent; while 10 per cent of bulls were from Prince Edward Island,” said Bill Pryor, an Angus producer at Centreville and chair of the New Brunswick Cattle Producers.
But “this year, New Brunswick breeders consigned 43 per cent of the bulls. This shift can be attributed to the positive impact of this initiative, and we are extremely pleased that we can count on this support for another year.”
“Genetic improvement efforts have also proven successful with swine, sheep, goat, fox and mink farmers,” the province said, noting “superior” mink breeding stock has been imported from ranches elsewhere in North America for “significant” improvements in pelt size and quality. And fox farmers were able replace breeding herds with younger and genetically superior breeders at a “much quicker” rate.
The remainder of the funding goes to the province’s Agri-Land Development Initiative, backing activities such as land clearing, consolidation and levelling to boost the land base for crops, allow for “more sustainable” crop rotation and provide more acres for livestock feed crops.
“Demand under this initiative has been high,” said Ouellette, adding that nearly $1.4 million has flowed through the program so far into nearly 300 development and improvement projects covering 5,200 acres for potatoes, blueberries, horticulture and feed crops.
Of those acres, about 3,600 have gone into wild blueberries, while about 950 acres of potato land were cleared or improved for crop rotation.
