No forage lease or permit auctions will take place this year for Agricultural Crown Lands, the province has said.
Grant Palmer, a policy specialist with Manitoba Agriculture who spoke at a provincially hosted Stock Talk webinar Jan. 16, linked the move to regulatory changes over the last several years.
“We’re taking more time to review the effectiveness of the changes and to determine future program priorities,” he told webinar attendees.
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There will, however, be cropping lease allocations from Feb. 24-28.
Why it matters: Crown land regulations have been a back-and-forth battle for ranchers, particularly in the Interlake and Parkland, since omnibus changes in 2019.
January of last year saw the current form of Crown land regulations finalized. Those rules took effect under the NDP, but echoed changes introduced by the previous government prior to the 2023 election which had rolled back some effects of the 2019 sweep of regulatory changes.
Those had outraged producers and sparked several years of farmer advocacy and smaller regulatory shifts. Issues have included a higher rental rates, loss of unit transfers, shorter lease terms and valuation of land improvements. The latest changes addressed some of those issues — including the ability to nominate the next leaseholder for the remaining lease term.
Changes in 2024 also allowed producers to extend their 15-year leases by five years with the submission of a forage management plan.
Producers have seen a series of rental freeze promises across two government administrations. In November 2024, the province announced that the current rental freeze would extend through 2025.
Rent rates will hold steady at $3.66 per animal unit month, or approximately $22.50 per cow-calf pair, Palmer said. Payments, typically due Jan. 1, are extended to Feb. 15 this year due to the Canada Post strike.
“This still seems like a very reasonable price on a per-head basis,” Palmer said. “The reason for the rent freeze is to continue to support producers and maintain affordability of Agricultural Crown Land.”
Last year, the province also announced a pause on Crown Land auctions.
“We feel that we need to maybe do some consultation and basically do a review of the Crown land program,” Manitoba Agriculture Minister Ron Kostyshyn said at that time.
The province estimates that Crown lands support about 75,000-85,000 cows annually, roughly 20 per cent of Manitoba’s 400,000-beef cow population
The program also supports broader provincial goals such as climate change adaptation, ecological services and Manitoba’s Treaty Land Entitlement (TLE) obligations, Palmer said.
“Because Ag Crown Land is Crown land, there are a number of steps that have to be taken to address those provincial obligations,” he said.
Applications for land nominations are subject to TLE reviews. Indigenous communities eligible under treaty agreements may select certain parcels for their use instead of the land being added into the pool of publically leasable parcels
