The Manitoba government has released a new report based on public consultations for the modernization of the Agricultural Crown Lands (ACL) program.

Earlier this year, the province launched a consultation to ensure upcoming policy changes reflected the views of the livestock industry. The consultations focused on land management, leasing restrictions, and the length of terms and renewability of forage leases.

Manitoba Beef Producers General Manager Brian Lemon talked about the need to improve transparency.

"The move to a tender is certainly a step towards bringing a little bit more transparency, and a little bit more of the market signals to the allocation of these Crown lands," he said. "There's still lots to be determined in terms of how that tender system is going work. The regulations they passed before Christmas have suggested that they are going to be allocating Crown lands via a tender. We were asking that they go further and they actually make it an auction system."

Manitoba Agriculture hosted 14 meetings with key stakeholders and received 37 written responses related to the ACL program.