WINNIPEG – The CAIS program is laced with shortcomings and a replacement is needed, prairie farm leaders suggested during a recent gathering.
Keystone Agricultural Producers led the call for change during the Canadian Federation of Agriculture’s semi-annual convention in Winnipeg. Farmers need something that is more responsive, predictable and bankable than the existing Canadian Agricultural Income Stabilization program, said KAP president David Rolfe.
“There may be aspects of CAIS that we could use,” Rolfe said later. “It’s not all bad, but there are way too many flaws with it as it currently stands.”
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The Agricultural Producers Association of Saskatchewan also favoured starting work on a replacement to CAIS. Although some improvements have been made to the program, it continues to have flaws that limit its merit for farmers, said APAS vice-president Cecilia Olver.
Reference margins and calculations on inventory and farm restructuring are among the common concerns.
“Reworking CAIS probably doesn’t have much potential,” Olver said. “Working on a new program would probably be far more important.”
But not everyone was as critical of CAIS. Bill Dobson, president of Alberta’s Wild Rose Agricultural Producers, said the safety net may be flawed, but it should not be abandoned without a thorough review of how well it is working for producers.
“It’s got its glitches and it’s being fine-tuned but it’s certainly working.”
By the close of the convention in Winnipeg, there was consensus that the CFA should review existing safety nets and identify how the programs could better support and stabilize agriculture.
CAIS makes up part of the business risk management pillar of the agricultural policy framework, a five-year blueprint for agriculture in Canada. Crop insurance also falls under that pillar.
CFA president Bob Friesen said CAIS has been improved since it was implemented and more changes are being contemplated. However, he said it still does not provide the stability and predictability that American producers enjoy under U.S. farm programs.
“This program is flowing record levels of money. There’s no question about it. It is flowing a heck of a lot of money. The problem is that, with the way it’s designed, a lot of farmers are still falling through the cracks.”
A question asked often at the CFA convention was how to make farming in Canada more profitable.
A farm leader from Quebec noted that producers there have established many value-added ventures but still are not seeing much improvement in their livelihoods.
Dobson said the ideal would be for producers to gain more income from the marketplace, but that is not happening. On average, Canadian farmers have barely broken even in recent years, according to federal data on realized net farm incomes.
“We want the money to come from the marketplace,” Dobson said. “But if you can’t get it from the marketplace due to factors that are international, trade disputes and trade programs, then it will have to come from government to get the industry through this time period.
“If the whole industry is underfunded all the time, it doesn’t do you any good to stabilize that.”
