There’s a spot of good news for dairy farmers reeling from this year’s natural disasters.
Just in time for Christmas, Agriculture and Agri-food Canada is accepting applications for the third round of payments under the Direct Payment Program, worth $38,000 to a farm with 80 cows.
The program delivers $1.75 billion to the dairy sector for domestic market access ceded under the Canada-European Union Comprehensive Economic and Trade Agreement (CETA) and the Comprehensive and Progressive Agreement for Trans-Pacific Partnership (CPTPP). Other supply-managed sectors were compensated separately.
Processors of all supply-managed products will be receiving their own compensation package in the new year, in the form of a $292.5 million Processor Investment Fund.
Compensation for concessions under CUSMA, the new free trade deal with the US and Mexico, is also in the works.
“Our commitment is to finalize the compensation for the agreement with the US and Mexico during our first year in this mandate,” federal agriculture minister Marie-Claude Bibeau told Country Life in BC. “Our officials have started the discussion to figure the impact of this third free trade agreement, and we will announce the amount of compensation.”
She says compensation will be announced in 2022, with payments beginning in 2023.
“The idea was that for the first two trade agreements, with Europe and the Trans-Pacific zone, payments were being paid over four years. And then compensation for CUSMA would come after,” she says.
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A century of dairy farming in Pitt Meadows