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Indeed, it was a week MFGA will remember well for a long time.
And certainly, with the somewhat lucky but great timing with Canada’s Agriculture Day to celebrate our nation’s farms and farmers, it all resonated so extra loudly.
MFGA took part in key meetings and dialogues during the past week to promote, collaborate with and celebrate our MFGA farms and farmer network. In fact, our staunch belief that many farmers are doing outstanding work on their farms right now from a soil health, water and healthy ecosystem perspectives made it into every single audience we addressed during this busy week.
And, we did have significant agricultural audiences around the table with us this week.
Coming off the great vibe, great success and outstanding connectivity of our 2023 MFGA Regenerative Agriculture Conference for farmers, industry and delegates, we have self-admittedly been a little quiet with our MFGA news.
Our colleagues at KAP and MBP each held successful AGMs recently that MFGA reps attended in good numbers. MFGA passes our congratulation to both organizations for their events and, especially, we’d like to pass our congratulations on to Jill Verwey, KAP president and Matthew Atkinson, MBP president for their recently-announced 2024 terms at the helm of each respective org.
But we have not been idle. We announced that Credit Unions of Manitoba have renewed their extremely valuable sponsorship of MFGA for five more years, from 2023 through 2027 at our 2023 conference, and we will be providing more detail on that great news in near future.
From a government relations perspective over the last week, we had a very motivating meeting with Hon. Ron Kostyshyn, Manitoba Agriculture Minister; Robert Loiselle, MLA for St. Boniface; and senior Manitoba Ag Staff focusing on the great work and potential of Manitoba’s early adopter farmers as detailed to the Minister from MFGA’s now-recently-minted 2024 executive: Mike Duguid, chair and Zack Koscielny, vice chair. (*Lawrence Knockaert, MFGA’s well-respected former chair, now past chair, was in Ottawa as part of a Dairy Farmers of Canada event and meeting that day and was unable to join the meeting with Minister Kostyshyn.)
There is a tried and true saying that farmers really like to hear from other farmers. And, most certainly, we agree. In fact, we’d put forward that it has been our experience that dual-hat wearing farmer-politicians at the helm of the province’s agriculture department – such as Minister Kostyshyn - are twice as interested, twice as engaged and twice as informed around on-farm topics. They get them, they live them, they work them.
The discussion with Minister Kostyshyn around MFGA, regenerative agriculture and MFGA’s strategic plans for our organization and farmer network going forward were super engaging as was the launching of a critical planning session around our MFGA Aquanty Model & Forecasting Tool, coordinated by Patti Rothenburger, Manitoba Agriculture Assistant Deputy Minister that will look to bring senior levels of government and industry stakeholders to the table in near future to discuss the advancement and role of this cutting-edge water and land management decision support tool in Manitoba.
The MFGA Aquanty Model and Forecasting Tool also generated an invite for MFGA and Aquanty to present as witnesses at the House of Commons Standing Committee on Environment and Sustainable Development February 13, 2024, in Ottawa. Dr. Steven Frey, Aquanty’s senior scientist appeared in person, and Duncan Morrison, MFGA executive director, appeared virtually. The main focus of the Committee session was data and freshwater, something the MFGA Aquanty Model merges as the highest definition water model on the Prairies, especially the focus on our incredibly valuable groundwater resource.
MFGA robustly thanks Dan Mazier, MP Dauphin-Swan River-Neepawa and vice-chair of the Environment and Sustainable Development committee for the invite. Appearing before the committee on Canada’s Ag Day and having the ability to detail the incredible potential impact of our MFGA Aquanty Model as well as being able to state unequivocally that that many farmers are doing outstanding work on their farms right now from a soil health, water and healthy ecosystem perspectives was a rare one-two combination for MFGA to blend the highest level technology with a strong grassroots on-farm narrative around the great work of many Prairie farmers to such a vitally important audience around such a vitally important topic: freshwater.
And finally, and certainly not the least important activity of the week by any stretch, MFGA added two well-respected board members to our farmer-led MFGA Board at our board meeting.
Paul Gregory and Zach Grossart were nominated and accepted by the MFGA Board to join our organization’s 2024-25 board. We will profile both of the new board members in upcoming MFGA outreach. As many non-profits and groups struggle with succession and volunteerism, to see two high-quality, interested candidates come forward and declare their want to be part of MFGA is a great signal for all of us as to how good we can all strive to be for the farmers in our MFGA network and province.
And, we fully accept that challenge. MFGA had a great week. We look forward to a great year.
MFGA BOARD OF DIRECTORS 2024-25
Mike Duguid, Chair, Camp Arnes, MB
Zack Koscielny, Vice Chair, Strathclair, MB
Lawrence Knockaert, Past Chair, Bruxelles, MB
Amber McNish, Lyleton, MB
Arron Nerbas. Shellmouth, MB
Chelsi Beernaert, Hartney, MB
Jacques Saquet, Laurent, MB
Harold Bosma, Grunthal, MB
Peter Tokar, Swan River, MB
Sean Smith, Clanwilliam, MB
Guy Bouchard, Vita, MB
Paul Gregory, Fisher Branch, MB
Zach Grossart, Brandon, MB
Duncan Morrison, Executive Director, Winnipeg, MB
For More Information
Duncan Morrison, MFGA Executive Director, 204.770.3548, Duncan@mfga.net
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