PFRA Regional Office: Manitoba Region

The PFRA Manitoba Region, with its five offices including Beausejour, Brandon, Dauphin, and Morden, Winnipeg and the facilities of the Manitoba Crop Diversification Centre (MCDC) at Carberry, provide a wide range of services towards addressing the needs of rural people. Geographically, the region encompasses all of Manitoba but the focus of activity is within agro-Manitoba. The region is highly diversified with respect to economic prosperity, cultural background and social circumstances. Agriculture and agri-food industry, combined with light industrial and tourism development, are its prime economic drivers.

Programs and Technical Expertise

The emphasis within PFRA is to deliver programs that will assist clients to adapt to changes in domestic and export markets in the agriculture and agri-food sector and to diversify in other types of enterprise. The current line of programs and services attempts to establish a balance of economic, environmental and social concerns to move the rural prairies towards sustainability.

PFRA has at its disposal tools that include direct programming such as the Rural Water Development Program (RWDP), technical and intellectual skills, physical resources such as MCDC and Community Pastures, and a broad range of contacts used in pathfinding. These tools, used in appropriate combinations, are employed to promote awareness of rural issues and opportunities and to assist in bringing about sustainable solutions to economic growth in rural Manitoba. Each manager in the Manitoba Region utilizes a different mix of programs and staff skills to meet the unique demands and needs of its client base. The following is an aggregation of program tools utilized in meeting regional goals, objectives, and priorities:

• Community Pastures
• Manitoba Crop Diversification Centre
• Shelterbelt Centre
• Soil Conservation

The underlying responsibility of PFRA in the Manitoba Region is to provide the best possible level of service to its clients and partners. PFRA relies heavily on the close relationship it maintains with clients and partners at the provincial, municipal/local, and individual level to identify needs and priorities and to focus its resources and efforts accordingly. Typically, PFRA clients are seeking assistance to:

• support the expansion of value-added processing
• support sustainable development/expansion of the livestock industry
• alleviate resource based constraints to economic activity, with water development being identified as a major constraint
• use resources in a sustainable manner, e.g. agricultural practices
• adapt to changes in domestic agricultural policy, e.g. Western Grain Transport Act phaseout
• diversify production in response to both domestic and global markets.

PFRA undertakes this work by:

• employing technical expertise in agronomy, environmental science, engineering, land and resource management
• providing a range of client services including pathfinding and financial assistance
• implementing programs and projects to address client needs.

Goals, Objectives, and Priorities

The goals, objectives, and priorities to which the PFRA Manitoba Region directs its technical and financial resources are summarized as follows:

• Remove infrastructure constraints to economic activities.
• Assist local governments, communities, individual clients and aboriginal people in evaluating concepts and developing proposals that adhere to the principles of sustainable resource based development.
• Support development of institutional infrastructure and industry-led initiatives that result in the growth of value-added processing of food and non-food crops in Manitoba.
• Support applied research, demonstration and development that leads to diversification of crop production for value-added industries.
• Assist the livestock sector address concomitant impacts on the resource base as it moves to more intensive operations.