More than half of Canadian farmers have not withdrawn money from their Net Income Stabilization Account funds in the past two years, despite well-documented poor prices.
Farm leaders say this is one of the findings from an Angus Reid survey of farmers done late in 1999 for Agriculture Canada that is making bureaucrats and agriculture ministers anxious. They have proposed a claw back of government NISA contributions from disaster payments.
Producers who didn’t withdraw money from NISA gave Angus Reid a variety of reasons.
One-third said they didn’t need the money, while another 26 percent said they didn’t trigger withdrawals. Nineteen percent said they are saving the money for retirement, while 15 percent said their balance
wasn’t high enough to help. Eleven percent said they thought they would need the money more in coming years.
A third of the farmers see the role of NISA as a retirement savings tool. Only 15 percent see it as a tool for securing financing, and 12 percent use it for managing cash flow.
