Alanna Koch, head of the Canadian Agri-Food Trade Alliance, is Saskatchewan’s new top agriculture bureaucrat.
The province’s new Saskatchewan Party government, which ousted the New Democrats in the Nov. 7 election, announced Koch’s appointment as deputy minister of agriculture on Tuesday as part of a list of orders-in-council naming new deputies.
New chiefs of staff were also announced for several departments, including ag economist Tim Highmoor as chief of staff for Agriculture Minister Bob Bjornerud.
Koch, who with her family operates a small grain farm at Edenwold, northeast of Regina, is an honourary life member of the Saskatchewan Institute of Agrologists and is well known in grain and ag policy circles in Western Canada.
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As president of CAFTA, whose members include a number of crop and livestock commodity groups as well as grain company Viterra, Koch spearheaded that group’s lobbying work to liberalize world trade by cutting subsidies.
She served on the board of Agricore United from 2003 up until that company’s merger with Saskatchewan Wheat Pool this year as Viterra. None of the former AU directors were brought back to the new company’s board.
Koch also previously served for eight years as the executive director of the Western Canadian Wheat Growers Association. She has also held posts as a director for the George Morris Centre ag think-tank at the University of Guelph, and as a director of AVAC Ltd., a non-profit investment firm launched by the Alberta and federal governments to back research and commercial start-ups in agriculture.
Koch is also no stranger to the Saskatchewan government, having previously served nine years in various posts including assistant principal secretary to the premier and as a chief of staff for several ministers.
Koch replaces Harvey Brooks, who had held the deputy ag minister’s job since June 2006. Brooks came to the province from a post as director of policy for Saskatchewan Wheat Pool, and was deputy minister in three departments before the ag post. The announcement of Koch’s new posting said Brooks “will be leaving government.”
Tim Highmoor, the new ag minister’s chief of staff, is also well known in the Prairie livestock sector, having worked as a policy analyst for beef producers’ organizations in Saskatchewan and Alberta and as an economist with the Western Beef Development Centre in Saskatoon.
Ag critic named
On a related note in the agriculture portfolio, Saskatchewan NDP leader Lorne Calvert on Monday named his shadow cabinet, which includes deputy Opposition leader Pat Atkinson as critic for agriculture as well as for co-operative development and immigration.
Atkinson, a Saskatoon MLA since 1986, was raised on a family farm near Biggar, west of the city, and served as finance minister as well as in several other portfolios during the NDP’s 16-year stint in government.
