Help arrived for waterlogged western Canadian farmers last week with the promise of up to $450 million delivered through the Agri-Recovery program.
Federal and provincial agriculture ministers say applications can start this week for $30 per acre payments on unseeded and drowned acres. Saskatchewan is eligible for $360 million, Alberta for $60 million and Manitoba for $30 million.
Promised relief money was universally welcomed by farm and commodity groups, and more than a few made positive note of the anticipated speedy delivery. They know that help in the face of crop disaster is by no means guaranteed. It depends on the scope of the disaster and often upon politics.
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But when provincial premiers and agriculture ministers toured flooded areas, as did federal agriculture minister Gerry Ritz and prime minister Stephen Harper, they were convinced, as they should be, that help is needed.
Indeed, as farmers survey unseeded fields and crops succumbing to excess moisture, any amount of assistance is welcome. Added to crop insurance, capped at $50 in Saskatchewan and available at up to $65 per acre in Manitoba and in a range of $25 to $70 in Alberta, the money will definitely be a help.
How much help will depend on individual situations, but figures provided by Viterra indicate the scope of the potential shortfall. The grain company estimates that farmers in Western Canada typically spend $70 to $110 per acre, depending on location and type of crop.
About eight million acres went unseeded this spring and another two million were lost to excessive moisture. Some loss estimates are even higher.
Two million lost acres means $140 million to $220 million spent on inputs that can’t be recovered. Farmers who intended to seed but were ultimately unable due to weather also incurred input costs amounting to millions of dollars.
Then consider the loss of returns that would have been realized from harvesting crops from 10 million acres and the total could become truly astonishing.
As well, production on land that did get seeded this spring is expected to be down. In its July 8 grains and oilseeds outlook, Agriculture Canada says “average yields are forecast to be below normal due to extreme wet conditions and cool temperatures across Western Canada.”
It predicts a 13 percent decrease in production Canada-wide and a corresponding decrease in exports. Thus the anticipated costs continue to mount.
So yes, the $450 million available through AgriRecovery will be helpful, and it is welcome, contrary to complaints from the Western Canadian Wheat Growers Association about ad-hoc payments.
But it is likely that additional assistance will be needed, and in that respect the WCWGA and other farm groups are right in their call for more reliable risk management programs.
The federal agriculture minister suggests AgriStability and AgriInvest will eventually make up to $1.4 billion available to water-affected farmers. Yet farmer experience with AgriStability in particular has produced myriad complaints about complexity and delayed payments. The financial help it offers is hard to calculate and is delivered long after it is needed to pay the bills.
Federal and provincial agriculture ministers had an opportunity to make progress on changes to business risk management programs, including AgriStability, at their meeting last week in Saskatoon.
They did acknowledge these concerns, but little if any progress was made toward improvements. Perhaps ministers were distracted by ad-hoc funding plans and tours of flooded fields. If so, we can cut them some slack.
But they should also use their recent observation of crop disaster as impetus to improve BRM programs for the good of all farmers.
Bruce Dyck, Terry Fries, Barb Glen and D’Arce McMillan collaborate in the writing of Western Producer editorials.
