Agriculture and Irrigation - Request for Proposal - AgriProfit$ - Water Shortages Economic Impact Assessment Module

The AgriProfit$ Business Analysis Program has collected farm financial and production data for 35 years. The data repository is a wealth of information that serves the department for analysis of policy issues. Concerted efforts to enhance data collection and analysis are an ongoing requirement. Contract services are needed to continue improvements for increasing efficiency in data collection and validation and add capabilities to meet the changing needs in agriculture. If the agricultural sector is to be accurately understood and the policies that affect its functioning are to remain informed, data collection programs must be enhanced to ensure they are keeping up with current realities. Mitigating the negative impacts of drought and water shortages leads us to consider conducting comprehensive and in-depth economic assessment of impacts on dryland and irrigated crop, and livestock producers. Such assessments form the basis for the development and possible implementation of cost-effective mitigating measures, as well as planning of Government funds to be used for such purposes. Proactively conducting such assessments on a timely basis is currently hindered by the lack of province-wide standardized economic impact assessment methodology as well as specialized analytical tools capable of producing such analysis. This current project is to eliminate such gaps, specifically in the above stated areas. The purpose of this RFP is to enable the development of a water shortages economic impact assessment module (module), as part of the AgriProfit$ framework, capable of assessing the impacts of water shortages on Alberta primary agriculture production.