Some commercial fruit growers in Saskatchewan are eligible for Saskatchewan Crop Insurance for the first time, following significant damages from flooding in recent years.
The program doesn’t cover yield or quality losses, but offers coverage for saskatoon, sour cherry and haskap producers who lose fruit-producing trees.
“It’s a start,” said Wayne Pearson, president of the Saskatchewan Fruit Growers Association (SFGA).
“The production loss program is something that we want to follow up with and add to the program as it is.”
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The program, which was developed by the SFGA, Saskatchewan Crop Insurance Corp. and the Saskatchewan agriculture ministry, includes fruit establishment insurance for trees one to three years old and replacement insurance for trees four to six years old for producers growing specific cultivars.
Pearson said the program, with “a good buy-in price,” could see a $3.50 per tree returned to a grower, said Pearson.
“Fruit is so different because it’s usually very small acreage of high value crops. So it’s a little different animal in a way from your grains and oilseeds,” said Pearson.
“So we couldn’t really adopt a formula that was already established. We sort of had to come up with our own figures, what we wanted to do and how to do that a little unique for fruit.”
Pearson hopes the program can be expanded to include all fruit crops in the province, but more historical data on production is needed that either doesn’t exist for newer crops or hasn’t been kept.
While the inclusion of fruit growers was announced shortly before the spring crop insurance deadline, Pearson said interest for such a program has been high among SFGA members.
“I think for now the replacement program is a really good start.”
