The provincial government announced Wednesday it has frozen the rates charged to producers who lease Crown grazing land in 2023 at their 2022 level. The freeze will apply to all grazing leases across the province, affecting about six million acres of Crown land in total.

Furthermore, producers who have to reduce their stocking rates on Crown land due to “ongoing dry conditions” will be eligible for a rent cut of up to 50 per cent.

Crown grazing rates in Saskatchewan are set each year using a formula based on fall cattle prices and the long-term stocking rate of each parcel. The rent cuts would apply where a lessee or pasture association must reduce the number of animals grazing on a Crown lease by 20 per cent or more, compared to the parcel’s approved long-term carrying capacity.

The 2023 rate cut would match the reduction in carrying capacity, ranging from a 20 per cent rate reduction up to the maximum 50 per cent.

“Saskatchewan’s livestock sector is facing increasing costs of production in addition to successive years of low precipitation in many areas of the province,” provincial Agriculture Minister David Marit said in a release.

The rate freeze and cuts, he said, “will assist producers through the current challenges while supporting the continued stewardship and productivity of the land.”

Shellbrook cattle producer Arnold Balicki, chair of the Saskatchewan Cattlemen’s Association, on Wednesday hailed the province’s announcement as “something many of our ranchers have been calling for.”

Neighbouring Manitoba last fall announced rent reductions for perennial forage growers leasing Crown land in 2023 and the following two years, citing “extreme weather conditions” ranging from excess moisture in 2022 to severe drought the previous two years. — Glacier FarmMedia Network

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Provincial Ag Minister Derek Johnson on Wednesday announced the forage lease rent on agricultural Crown land will be reduced by 50 per cent in 2023, 33 per cent in 2024 and 15 per cent in 2025.

These rent reductions will be automatically applied starting with next year’s bills, the province said, so forage leaseholders won’t need to apply for the cut.

“Stakeholders have told us that rental rates on forage lands are challenging with the hardships they are experiencing following the past two years of extreme weather conditions,” Johnson said in a release.

“We are responding to their concerns by implementing this rent reduction program over the next three years, which will provide ranchers with up to $4 million in relief.”

Said “extreme weather conditions” have ranged from severe drought the past two years to excess moisture this year, which have “significantly affected the productivity and forage capacity of agricultural Crown lands,” the province said.”

The rent cut will be in place as the productivity of the land recovers and as “further improvements” to the province’s agricultural Crown lands program are put in place, Johnson said.

The provincial ag department said it’s “exploring other policy, program, regulation and service improvements to enhance the productivity and sustainability of agricultural Crown forage lands including mechanisms for leaseholders to invest in productivity and adjustments to the terms and conditions of leases.”

Other changes made in the past several years as a result of the province’s ongoing review of the Crown land program included the move to an online auction system; a “market-based” formula for calculating rental rates; and the eliminations of lifetime leases and unit transfers.

The program review now includes an online public survey that will be available until late October. — Glacier FarmMedia Network

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The West African country has a history of sometimes deadly conflict between local communities and foreign companies that have cleared huge tracts of land for palm oil and sugarcane plantations in recent years.

Locals have complained of environmental damage, losing their livelihoods and not being fairly compensated for their land. Under the current system, landowners get an annual rent of $2.50 per acre, which was determined by the state.

The Customary Land Rights Act and the Land Commission Act, both enacted on Monday, empower local landowners to negotiate the value of their land with investors and prevent it being leased out without their express consent.

Campaigners and locals praised the move, while one palm oil company executive said it would spell the end of investment.

“To our knowledge there is not a legal regime anywhere, in either hemisphere that grants such robust rights to communities facing harm,” said Eleanor Thompson of Namati, an international legal advocacy group.

A director of SOCFIN, the biggest agribusiness company in Sierra Leone, called it a “dream of NGOs.”

“Certainly it will block any investment… It makes things very expensive and we are all prone to enormous blackmail by various communities,” Gerben Haringsma added.

The Luxembourg-based company has invested more than $150 million in palm oil farming in Sierra Leone. It has also frequently clashed with local landowners.

Lands Minister Turad Senessie said the new laws would encourage investment by ensuring peace and order.

“This is a win-win situation for both business and Sierra Leoneans including rural landowners,” he told Reuters.

One of the laws will also end a colonial-era provision that bars descendants of freed slaves from owning land outside the capital, Freetown.

— Reporting for Reuters by Umaru Fofana.

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Normally, I would be enjoying this small luxury of peace and quiet while my children sleep. That was before.

I now spend every minute worrying about how am I going to keep my ranch… my livelihood. The threat of losing everything my late father worked for, what my late husband and I worked for, what I have fought to hang on to, occupies almost every waking moment.

Each day I am greeted with the smiling faces of my children, and I smile back at them, wondering how I will continue to provide for them if I lose my ranch.

My lease bill has jumped from $6,000 a year to $24,000 a year. I paid the doubled rate of $12,000 in 2020 and then received the $24,000 bill in December of 2020. I am being asked to pay a total of $36,000 in less than a year. An increase that was supposed to be “phased in” over a two-year period, they said, which still isn’t ample time.

My deadline is coming closer each day. I have no idea yet how I am going to pay for it. I have asked for a payment plan to help me, but am callously told my lease will be cancelled and go to auction. I have had no consultation in regards to this, given no time at all to try and prepare for it. I am heartbroken.

I ask Minister Pedersen and Premier Pallister to imagine how they would feel if it was their daughter and their grandchildren going through this. Would they still just stand back and watch the destruction of a family and business?

I cannot believe this is what I voted for.

If I only knew the truth before the provincial election.

Melanie Chewka
Inglis

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The Department of Interior, which oversees BLM, announced the move in letters to key congressional committees. The decision will save taxpayers US$50 million on costs like real estate, salaries and travel expenses and will locate BLM officials closer to the areas they serve, officials said.

BLM is charged with overseeing programs on vast swathes of public lands including grazing, oil and gas drilling and recreation.

Most BLM land is in the western U.S. and includes about 155 million acres of grazing land and rangeland in 14 states, among them Montana, North Dakota, Idaho, Washington and Alaska. U.S. cattle and sheep producers hold almost 18,000 grazing permits and leases on BLM-managed public lands.

The BLM will move 27 Washington-based staff to a new headquarters in Grand Junction, about 390 km west of Denver, and an additional 222 positions will be relocated to other agency offices in the U.S. west close to where their work is needed.

For instance, staff working on the agency’s timber program would move to Oregon, and those working on rangelands and grazing would move to Idaho.

Conservation groups were quick to say the move amounted to a dismantling of the agency by moving it away from the place where decisions are made. Such groups have been critical of the Trump administration’s efforts to open up more public lands to oil and gas drilling and to loosen environmental policies aimed at protecting federal lands.

In a statement, Center for Western Priorities executive director Jennifer Rokala called the move “another cynical attempt to drain the Interior Department of expertise and career leadership. Our public lands deserve an agency that is effectively co-ordinating with the Interior Department more broadly, and with Congress.”

On a conference call with reporters, BLM officials said such critics lacked an understanding of how the agency’s business is conducted.

“Most of the work of the bureau gets done at the state and local level,” said Joe Balash, Interior’s assistant secretary for land and minerals management.

Experienced BLM employees who choose to relocate will be able to mentor a new generation of BLM staff, he added.

— Reporting for Reuters by Nichola Groom. Includes files from Glacier FarmMedia Network staff.

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Fewer than 400 white farmers are still operating in the southern African nation, after former president Robert Mugabe’s government evicted more than 4,000 under an often-violent land reform program.

Those who remained were issued with five-year renewable leases by the state compared to 99-year leases for black farmers, leaving their land vulnerable to expropriation by the government.

The agriculture ministry circular to staff, seen by Reuters, says white farmers should now be issued the same 99-year leases as black farmers.

“Please be informed that the minister of Lands, Agriculture and Resettlement has directed that all remaining white farmers be issued 99-year leases instead of the five-year leases as per the previous arrangement,” said the circular, dated Jan. 19.

Land ownership is one of Zimbabwe’s most sensitive issues. Colonialists seized some of the best agricultural land and much of it remained in the hands of white farmers after independence in 1980, while many blacks were landless.

Twenty years later, Mugabe authorized the violent invasions of many white-owned farms, justifying them on the grounds that they were redressing imbalances from the colonial era.

Mugabe, 93, resigned in November after the army and his ZANU-PF party turned against him.

Earlier this month a government document showed that Zimbabwe is considering establishing a special tribunal to determine the value of compensation and how to pay it to white farmers who have lost their land since 2000.

Many white farmers challenged their evictions legally but lost. Under Zimbabwe’s constitution all agricultural land belongs to the government.

— Reporting for Reuters by MacDonald Dzirutwe.

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The province, in its March budget, announced a request for offer (RFO) for the Saskatchewan Grain Car Corporation’s (SGCC) fleet of rail cars as it winds down that operation.

The province said it would give “first priority” to Saskatchewan’s 13 commercial shortline railways and has since accepted three offers.

Regina-based Big Sky Railway — which operates 402 km of track from Saskatoon out to Laporte, Sask., southwest of Kindersley — will get 663 of SGCC’s 898 remaining cars, the province said Wednesday.

Shaunavon-based Great Western Railway, which operates almost 500 km of track in the province’s southwest, will buy 150 cars, while Leader-based Great Sandhills Railway, which operates almost 200 km of track in the same region, will buy 85 cars.

Terms of the deals for each of the buyers weren’t disclosed Wednesday, though the province said it would sell the cars for a total of $9.7 million, or $10,800 per car on average.

The deals are expected to close in the next two to three months, the province said in a release Wednesday.

An evaluation committee, with members from SGCC and the provincial highways ministry along with a consultant, “fairness advisor” and legal counsel, reviewed all offers, the province noted.

SGCC was set up as a provincial Crown corporation to manage a fleet of 1,000 hopper cars for which the province paid $55 million as a “strategic investment” in 1981.

In fiscal 2015-16, SGCC reported $2.66 million in revenue, which it billed as a new record for the corporation. Of its 900 cars at the time, 485 had been leased to Canadian Pacific Railway and 415 to Last Mountain Railway, an affiliate of Big Sky Railway.

About 100 of the original fleet’s 1,000 cars have been deemed damaged beyond economic repair and destroyed, SGCC said. In 2015-16, it ran 85 random mechanical inspections on cars from its fleet, finding 20 in “good” condition, 58 rated “average” and three “poor.”

Under Association of American Railroads rules, the province said in March, rail cars can be interchanged between railways for up to 50 years, meaning SGCC’s cars have about 14 years of service life left.

Given the cars’ remaining service life, “the fleet still has value in the industry,” Dave Marit, the provincial minister for SGCC, said in Wednesday’s release.

“Selling the cars to our shortlines means they will continue to move commodities grown by Saskatchewan producers.”

The replacement cost for SGCC’s original fleet of 1,000 cars was estimated in March to run around $100 million. — AGCanada.com Network

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The province announced in March it would wind down the SPP, kicking off a public consultation process. Based on those consultations, the province confirmed Thursday it will grant the 50 provincial pastures’ current patron groups the first option on 15-year leases for the sites.

The pastures, which combined cover about 780,000 acres, will transition out of the program over the next three years, starting with 13 in the province’s northwest, for the 2018 grazing season.

Another 19 pastures in the northeast and northwest will move out of the program in the 2019 season; the remaining 18, in the northeast and south, will make the transition by the 2020 season.

Leases in these cases will be similar to those offered to patrons of federal community pastures, the province said. The federal pastures have been moving to patron control since 2012.

If “interested parties” such as environmental agencies, municipalities or First Nations want to work with patron groups that can’t lease the land on their own, those organizations may partner with patrons to obtain the 15-year lease.

The leases will also allow continued access for hunting, including the “exercise of rights and traditional uses” by First Nations and Metis communities, the province said.

Pastures slated to move out of the SPP after the 2017 grazing season include Antelope Park, Beacon Hill, Bluebell, Cabana, Fairholme, Fielding, Grill Lake, Hafford, Hatherleigh, Lizard Lake, Makwa, McDonald Creek and St. Walburg.

The pastures remaining in the SPP to the end of the 2018 grazing season include Barrier Lake, Bertwell, Big River, Cookson, Crystal Springs, Donsland, Jackson Lake, Lady Lake, Marean Lake, Mistatim, Pathlow, Pleasantdale, Rosthern-St. Julien, Smeaton, Smoky Burn, Swan Plain, Sylvania, Whitebeech and Wingard.

The remaining pastures, which stay in the SPP to the end of the 2019 season, include Arena, Beechy, Calder-Togo, Dixon, Good Spirit, Grainland, Insinger, Mankota, Matador, Meyronne, Midale, Millie, Old Wives, Pipestone, Regina Beach, Scout Lake, Strawberry Lake and Valjean.

“This approach will ensure continued grazing opportunities and environmental stewardship of the land,” provincial Agriculture Minister Lyle Stewart said Thursday.

The SPP, which dates back to 1922, was set up to help the ag industry diversify by assisting small cattle producers, but “the agriculture industry has evolved, as have the needs of producers, and the program is no longer necessary,” the government said in March.

In 2015, the province said, the SPP supported about five per cent of the provincial cattle herd. Based on 2011 census data, about 12 per cent (1,300) of Saskatchewan cattle producers use the SPP.

The province’s consultations on SPP pastures found “broad support” for granting the first option to existing patrons, while the “majority” of participants opposed the idea of selling off or subdividing SPP lands.

The Agricultural Producers Association of Saskatchewan (APAS) said in a separate release Thursday it was pleased the province heeded its recommendations for winding down the SPP.

“We are pleased to see that the consensus of producers and the public are reflected in the announcement, and that it was made early to allow patrons to plan for the future,” APAS president Todd Lewis said.

However, he added, the group hopes to have “further conversations on ways the pastures can continue to support access by beginning and young producers,” noting the SPP has until now “provided new entrants and mixed farmers with grazing opportunities that otherwise might not be available.” — AGCanada.com Network

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