RED DEER – Disaster insurance that covers all agriculture sectors and rural businesses will be needed if Alberta experiences another drought this summer, according to an Alberta farm lobby group.
The Wild Rose Agricultural Producers passed a resolution asking government to consider a specific disaster aid program for farms, ranches and agribusinesses adversely affected by severe weather.
“We have to sit down and think of special ways to deal with rural Alberta when we get into long periods of severe drought,” said vice-president Bill Dobson.
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The province has paid out about $700 million in crop insurance payouts due to this year’s severe drought across central Alberta, said Barry McFarland, chair of the agriculture standing policy committee.
He agreed that planned disaster programs are better than sporadic emergency payments to bail people out.
“Crop insurance was designed for the one-year wreck,” said McFarland.
At the farm group’s annual meeting in Red Deer Jan. 8, many farmers agreed current programs helped but most did not go far enough or deliver aid to those most in need.
Their dissatisfaction extended to the province’s crop insurance’s variable price option contracts.
Alberta farmers can buy extra crop insurance under a program called the variable price option. It provides extra coverage if grain prices increase by more than 10 percent by July 31.
President Neil Wagstaff said this year’s prices were based on out-of-date figures. CPS wheat was adjusted upward by 12 percent of January prices, while other classes of wheat were raised by only two percent at a time prices were substantially increasing.
“There were many producers around this province who were shortchanged significantly as a result of how that price was adjusted at the end of July.”
