Farm safety net issue expected to heat up

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Published: February 23, 1995

WINNIPEG – According to a senior policy advisor to the federal agriculture department, it’s hard to talk safety nets when everyone is thinking about transportation and trade.

“When you’ve got transportation on your mind and marketing on your mind, worrying about the disaster that hasn’t happened on the production side … it’s not uppermost in your mind,” said Tom Richardson, director-general of farm income policy and programs.

Richardson told delegates to the annual meeting of Prairie Pools Inc. held here last week that safety net wrangling may have been pushed to the backburner temporarily, but the issues are coming to a boil.

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While the framework for a national safety net has been set, Richardson said the next few months should see federal and provincial governments battling over how the pieces of a whole-farm program, crop insurance and companion programs fit together.

Contentious issue

He said determining how money is allocated to provinces for these programs will be, “a bone of contention.”

Watching these areas could provide clues to how Canada’s safety net puzzle might fit together:

  • He described Alberta’s new income stabilization fund as a whole-farm Gross Revenue Insurance Plan with offsets in which producers don’t pay premiums unless they collect.
  • Cattle producers and farmers of supply-managed commodities have been reluctant to participate in a national program. This could undermine efforts to avoid trade challenges from the U.S.
  • The U.S. could reveal some of its views on the National Income Stabilization Account program in swine countervail administrative reviews, due to be released soon.
  • The new U.S. crop insurance program seems “somewhat attractive” so far to the Canadian government because it is relatively simple and cheap.

Richardson said currently NISA seems to be the favorite approach for a whole-farm program. Interest-free cash advances for farmers will soon be back, though.

He stressed that crop insurance has to be an important part of the package.

“If GRIP is going to … disappear completely, I think what that does is it pushes back the production side of the challenge back on to crop insurance,” said Richardson.

He told delegates half of all GRIP payments in Alberta and Manitoba were triggered by production problems rather than prices.

About the author

Roberta Rampton

Western Producer

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