Saskatchewan’s opposition party is adding its voice to the group calling for an investigation into beef and cattle pricing in Canada.
New NDP leader Carla Beck, accompanied by Agriculture Critic Trent Wotherspoon, toured the Ag in Motion farm show this week, and spoke to RealAgriculture about what she sees as priorities for the agriculture sector in Saskatchewan.
“Something that we’ve heard a lot about is there used to be more of a correlation between the price that you pay at the grocery store — the consumer price — and and what folks were getting for their animals. That’s a bit out of whack now, and I think that warrants an investigation, both for those producers, but also for consumers,” she says, in the interview below.
The Saskatchewan Stock Growers Association is also calling for a beef pricing investigation.
Both the SSGA and Saskatchewan NDP are calling on the federal and provincial agriculture ministers to discuss the issue and commit to the investigation as part of the federal-provincial-territorial (FPT) agriculture ministers’ annual meeting taking place in Saskatoon this week.
“Saskatchewan beef is a high quality protein-rich food staple that many homes are having a harder time buying in this affordability crisis,” noted Wotherspoon. “Consumers deserve to know the breakdown of where their dollar is going and producers deserve a fair price for their cattle.”
As of Thursday, it wasn’t clear whether the ministers would be discussing a potential beef pricing investigation as part of the FPT meeting.
Check out the interview below for more with new Saskatchewan NDP leader Carla Beck on her priorities for Saskatchewan agriculture, beef pricing, the future of irrigation in the province, and how ag policy would differ under an NDP government:
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