REGINA – Emergency cash advances will be available to prairie grain farmers who still have crop in the field, agriculture minister Ralph Goodale announced Monday.
Addressing delegates at the Saskatchewan Wheat Pool annual meeting, Goodale said up to $15,000 for unharvested grain and up to $3,000 to help pay for drying damp grain will be available to eligible farmers.
The money is available through the Prairie Grain Advance Payments Act, which normally provides up to $250,000 in advances on stored grain after Nov. 15 each year. The first $50,000 of that is interest-free.
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The legislation allows for emergency payments and Goodale said conditions this year warranted his decision.
“This fall, farmers in many parts of the Prairies have experienced real trouble and real frustration with this year’s harvest,” he said. “The weather, quite frankly, was the pits.”
More information coming
He could not say how many farmers might apply or how much the government expected to pay out.
“We should know within the course of the next month as to what the uptake on this program is,” he told reporters.
One pool delegate welcomed the announcement but said it isn’t enough.
“I appreciate the $50,000 interest-free,” said Donald Dean of Langbank, “but (for) an average farmer, the cost of growing a crop far exceeds the $50,000.”
He asked Goodale if the emergency payouts were considered part of the interest-free $50,000, but the minister didn’t know.
“I suspect, quite frankly, the way the act is written it’s not,” Goodale said. “That the total is $50,000 that is interest-free and if you don’t have enough that’s actually harvested in order to take advantage of the 50 that you can have access to 15 for that crop which is unharvested.”
Pool president Leroy Larsen also said he would have liked the emergency payment to be higher.
“When you look at costs of $50, $70, $100 an acre in putting in a crop, that doesn’t go very far in today’s operations.”
Larsen expects quite a few farmers will be eligible for the emergency advances.
“I know that in the area that my farm is located there is still a lot of crop out and I know some of them are wondering how they’re going to pay some of the bills before they can get back at their harvest, which now looks like next spring,” he said.
