The Mountain View County agricultural service board (ASB) has reviewed resolutions scheduled to come before this week's provincial agriculture service board conference.
The review came during the recent regularly scheduled ASB meeting in council chambers.
"Resolutions bring forward issues to make suggestions or recommendation for future action to bring about desired change," administration said in a briefing note to the board.
In all, 12 resolutions were put forward, dealing with such things as crop insurance, farm marketing, proposed federal tax changes, and wildlife predation compensation.
The ASB is made up of county councillors and members of the region's agriculture community. It makes recommendation to Mountain View County and the provincial government.
• One resolution relates to environmental stream funding of the agricultural service board grant programs. It calls on the provincial government to ensure funding provided by Alberta Agriculture and Forestry to rural municipalities is able to "maintain their extension and education program while retaining professional staff.
"Municipalities with extension and education programs would like to ensure that their programs continue to benefit producers and that professional staff hired to manage programs are retained."
• Another resolution calls on the province to "work collaboratively to review and revamp Alberta Financial Services Corporation's annual crop production insurance products and processes."
A background note with the resolution states, in part, that, "the unfortunate weather conditions in 2016 and 2017 emphasized a number of inadequacies in AFSC procedures and payments. While the past two years were exceptional, they demonstrated challenges in current AFSC practices that delayed timely assessment."
• Another resolution calls on Alberta Agriculture to "advocate for clear and concise labelling and testing of products claiming organic authenticity. Testing by CFIA needs to be increased, available and concise to inform consumers throughout Canada as to what they are receiving when they purchase a product labelled ‘organic'."
• Another resolution calls on the province to advocate for the family farm and small businesses of Alberta to revoke the proposed tax changes in the "tax planning using private corporations" document released by the Department of Finance.
"The proposed changes threaten the viability of farmers and family farms and have potential implications for the amount of tax farmers pay and could penalize farmers for trying to keep family farms within the family by establishing farm corporations."
• Another resolution calls on the province to "immediately implement a permanent program, with adequate allocation of staff and funds for weed control on vacant public lands within green areas as part of a comprehensive framework to address invasive species in Alberta."
• Another resolution calls on the province to "require all persons to report any instances of Norway rat, wild boar when at large, as well as clubroot, to the local authority. Notifying the local authority of the pests would improve the local authority's ability to deal with this, and benefit the people, agricultural industry and enhanced environmental protection of the province."
• Another resolution calls on the province to "implement an enhanced predator compensation program that could utilize trained municipal problem wildlife staff to assist in the confirmation of livestock loss, both livestock death and livestock injury in a timely and prompt manner."
If passed at the ASB conference, the resolutions would be used to lobby the province.
The Peace Region hosts the 73rd ASB conference on Jan. 16 - 19.
