Two-year reprieve for TBARS

Wednesday, January 6, 2016

by SUSAN MANN

The Thunder Bay Agricultural Research Station has two more years to find sustainable funding to operate now that the provincial agriculture ministry is giving it $350,000.

Christina Crowley-Arklie, press secretary and senior communications adviser to Ontario Agriculture Minister Jeff Leal, says by email the funding is a “one-time transfer payment” to support the station’s continuing operations. The station will get $200,000 in the first year and up to an additional $150,000 in the second year.

Kevin Belluz, chair of the Thunder Bay Agricultural Research Association, says it costs about $250,000 annually to operate the station. The association, a non-profit corporation, has operated the station since 2003.

“It’s a very well run station,” he says. The station focuses its research on field crops and forages.

The Ontario agriculture ministry says in its Jan. 4 press release the $350,000 in funding will provide the research association with an opportunity to work with the Northern Ontario Farm Innovation Alliance and other northern agricultural and research stakeholders to develop a coordinated, long-term plan for agricultural research in the north.

That has been the government’s goal since the association took over operating the station, Belluz says. During the last couple of years, the government has said it wasn’t willing to contribute a significant portion of funding for the station anymore, he adds.

Belluz says when the government closed the station in 2002 the local farmers formed the research association “and kept the station going ourselves. The funding (to operate it) has been primarily still public funding, and we have been trying to find whatever private and other sources of funding that we can.”

The government has supported the Thunder Bay station through the Northern Ontario Heritage Fund Corporation and the Ministry of Northern Development and Mines. The Ontario Ministry of Agriculture, Food and Rural Affairs founded the station in 1991. The University of Guelph (Kemptville College) managed the station from 1996 to 2002.

A year ago, the last program funding from the Heritage Fund ran out “so we were on life support last year,” Belluz explains. The association received some money from the federal and provincial governments last year to do a sustainability study.

Tarlok Singh Sahota, station director of research and business, says they’re not clear yet if the government wants the Thunder Bay station to forge an alliance with other research stations in Northern Ontario, including the ones in New Liskeard and Emo.

Sahota says the Thunder Bay station can’t work on that option “because we cannot have control over the other stations unless government asks us to take the lead and gives money for that.”

Belluz says the association is trying to be creative and find new funding sources. BF