As agriculture ministers prepare for an April 20 meeting in Ottawa to talk about a new five-year farm policy framework, federal minister Gerry Ritz has an agenda for change.
He said April 13 that during the past several years of federal-provincial negotiations, which are supposed to culminate with an agreement in Whitehorse next September, he has been pushing for significant changes to the farm program model.
Ritz wants a “cross-compliance” model that forces farmers to self-insure before they are eligible for public support.
And the minister is promoting an insurance model that he said would reduce problems farmers have with existing programs including a lack of payments in the “whole farm” model and program payment caps.
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In the farm community, there also is speculation that Ottawa would prefer an insurance component to disaster payments through AgriRecovery, limiting government exposure.
At the end of March, finance minister Jim Flaherty used his budget to announce that federal-provincial negotiations for a new five-year farm policy agreement called Growing Forward “will include a refocused suite of business risk management programs.”
Last week, Ritz offered ideas on what the refocus could mean while noting that the final result will depend on provincial and territorial agreement.
He said a move toward producer insurance coverage on production would deal with the complaint that the existing AgriStability ‘whole farm’ system favours farmers with one crop rather than a number of crops that often can mask losses on one commodity and reduce or eliminate payments from the program.
Also, it would end the cap on program payments that has irritated larger operators (as well as smaller operators who argue the cap is so high it send most money to the large).
“I’ve been a promoter of the insurance-based program all along,” said the agriculture minister. “It gets you away from the whole farm program, it gets you away from the cap. I think livestock insurance as opposed to AgriStability, for example, would probably answer a lot of those questions.”
Ritz also said farmers should have an obligation to protect themselves with insurance and not just expect a government payment when things go wrong.
Canadian Federation of Agriculture president Ron Bonnett agrees and said he doesn’t dispute that policy direction.
“If we’re going to have government support with premium assistance on insurance-type programs, then I think there has to be a commitment from farmers on it as well,” he said.
