ST. JOHN’S, Nfld. – Farm leaders attended an Ottawa meeting of the national safety nets committee this week armed with both determination and evidence to convince Ottawa to sweeten the farm support pot.
The determination is that recent farm income projections show conclusively the need for better farm safety net programs, they say.
Manitoba and Saskatchewan will spend the next five years struggling to keep their farm economies in the black, according to the projections.
“There are increased openings to make changes,” Benoit Basillais, a Canadian Federation of Agriculture safety nets specialist told delegates to the CFA summer board meeting July 29.
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The evidence is a calculation Basillais prepared that challenges the government argument that the Agricultural Income Disaster Assistance program cannot cover farmers’ yearly deficits because it would undermine crop insurance.
He presented figures that argue that crop insurance is more useful to farms with a mixed production base. AIDA helps those with more concentrated cropping patterns.
“They are not in conflict,” said Basillais.
“They are complementary. The potential impact of AIDA on crop insurance is minimal.”
CFA president Bob Friesen, a member of the safety nets committee, said those calculations would be the basis of another argument that the AIDA program be revised to compensate farmers for deficits.
He also said recent figures from the government add to the CFA fear that the full federal commitment of $900 million in AIDA funding over two years will not be spent.
A projection from payments already made under the program suggests that several hundred million dollars will not be claimed, despite the clear farmer need, he said.
And even Agriculture Canada bureaucrats added only $300 million in AIDA spending into their 1999 farm income projections.
Friesen said it remains important to get a federal commitment that no matter how difficult the rules for eligibility are, all the money promised by cabinet will be sent to the farm community.
