Prairie Farm Rehabilitation Administration

The Prairie Farm Rehabilitation Administration (PFRA) was a branch under Agriculture and Agri-Food Canada, a department of the Federal Government of Canada. It has since been integrated with National Land and Water Information Service (NLWIS) and Agri-Environmental Policy Bureau (AEPB), as part of the Agri-Environment Services Branch (AESB).^[1]

The Prairie Farm Rehabilitation Administration was established by an Act of Parliament in 1935 in response to the widespread drought, farm abandonment and land degradation of the 1930s. Its role was to :

"... secure the rehabilitation of the drought and soil drifting areas in the Provinces of Manitoba, Saskatchewan and Alberta, and to develop and promote within those areas, systems of farm practice, tree culture, water supply, land utilization and land settlement that will afford greater economic security..."

With this mandate, the PFRA served to promote sustainable development on the rural prairies for over six decades in the areas of air, water, soils, and biodiversity. Its mandate included detailed examination of various devices for soil conservation and enrichment.^[2][3]

Federal funding for the PFRA's shelterbelt program to provide free seedlings of trees and shrubs to prairie farmers was discontinued in 2013 by the Conservative Federal Minister of Agriculture, Gerry Ritz, thus ending a long era of very low cost erosion and drought control measures throughout the prairies.

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