NDP repeats calls for action committee on drought relief

After nearly a decade of drought in the southwest, the Saskatchewan NDP is calling for action from the provincial government.

On Wednesday, the opposition reiterated its calls for the creation of a drought action committee.

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The committee would involve affected producers and would focus on strengthening emergency measures and business risk management programs.

“(The Government of Saskatchewan) needs to sit and work with these producers and these municipalities because they know best what levers exist within those programs,” said agriculture critic Trent Wotherspoon.

“There’s a range of common-sense calls that these producers have made that would adjust and make changes to these programs to provide them the support they need.”

Wotherspoon said one of the changes would include the creation of a threshold to enable farmers to combine and retain seed from poor yields without being penalized by crop insurance going forward.

Wotherspoon and the NDP also called for a 10-year deferral on taxes for producers who have been forced to sell breeding stock because of the drought.

The Government of Saskatchewan doubled the maximum payment cap for the AgriStability business risk management program in July.

However, Wotherspoon said the province needed to go further.

“When you have an area that’s been in this protracted drought for over nine years – a drought that’s worse than ever before –  the averages and the way the business risk management programs work, they’re just not going to be able to support producers that are in this region,” Wotherspoon said.

The opposition was joined virtually by Tyson Jacksteit, a farmer and councillor from the R.M. of Big Stick, which formally declared a state of emergency due to the drought in June.

Big Stick Coun. Tyson Jacksteit (left) and Reeve Quinton Jacksteit appeared virtually at the NDP’s conference. In a previous interview, they’ve said the drought conditions in their area are unlike anything they’ve seen before. (Daniel Reech/980 CJME)

Jacksteit also said the AgriStability changes won’t due much to help.

“It’s a five-year Olympic average. So after nine years, you take our best and our worst out – those years are going to all average (out) … even if they upped it to 90 per cent, which they did this year, how do we fall below that 90 per cent when we’ve been losing money for nine consecutive years? It’s impossible,” he said.

Although the region received some rain this summer, Jacksteit said the situation was still dismal as of Wednesday.

He spoke alongside Quinton Jacksteit, the reeve of Big Stick.

“If you’d have told me nine years ago that we’d be sitting in this situation, I would have never believed you, but we are,” Quinton said. “We desperately need the support of this government to help us financially or in any way possible.”

Rent reduction for crown land grazing

On Wednesday, the Ministry of Agriculture introduced the Crown Grazing Lease Rental Reduction Program for 2025.

The initiative is supposed to allow crown grazing land lessees the opportunity to apply for a rent reduction if they reduce their number of grazing animals by 20 per cent or more.

The program had previously been used in 2023 and 2024 to help producers dealing with dry conditions.

“Saskatchewan’s livestock producers continue to face challenges with grazing due to consecutive years of dry conditions,” Agriculture Minister Daryl Harrison said in a news release. “The province is committed to supporting our livestock producers through these challenges.”

The deadline for applications is Oct. 31, 2025.