Manitoba’s Agriculture Minister estimates the province will be ready to move forward with a Targeted Growth Strategy for Agriculture within the next six to eight months.
More than 100 agricultural stakeholder groups were represented yesterday in Portage La Prairie for consultations hosted by Manitoba’s Agriculture Minister to gather input and discuss the development of strategies to help grow the agriculture sector.
Ralph Eichler says agriculture and food production are important economic drivers in Manitoba and the Manitoba government wants to ensure stakeholders play a key role developing a targeted growth strategy.
We’re trying to get ready for our Federal, Provincial, Territories Ministerial Meeting coming up in July and I want to be able to carry Manitoba’s views and their thoughts as we go forward to meet with my counterparts across Canada. The two outreaches that we had, the first one on June 28 and of course this one, we’ve got an awful lot of feedback. This is an opportunity to get it right.
Manitoba has been a leader and we want to just take it to the next level and make sure we get more information out to our other colleagues who have been actually calling and reaching out saying what are you hearing in Manitoba so we’re excited about that and have that opportunity. The whole concept about the conversation and you heard that word over and over and over today and that’s really what it’s all about. People want to be heard. They want to have the ability to be able to say I talked to the minister about this, yes it’s important, yes this is what we need to deliver and how are we going to do that together. Again it comes back to that conversation.
The other word that came up a lot was education. How are we going to educate the general population about where our food comes from, how do we make sure that it continues to be safe, how do we continue to deliver that food for value and make sure the consumer is rewarded at the end of the day and understands where the food comes from. ~ Ralph Eichler, Agriculture Minister Manitoba
Eichler expects to be ready to roll out a targeted growth strategy within six to eight months.
