VANCOUVER – British Columbia is extending its Whole Farm Insurance Program for another year and may extend its orchard replant assistance program until 2005.
The changes represent a commitment of approximately $41.2 million.
Extending the insurance program for a third year will cost $6.8 million and allow farmers to access up to $10 million in federal income assistance through the Agricultural Income Disaster Assistance program in the coming year.
By the first year’s deadline, B.C. farmers had filed 1,014 applications for assistance under AIDA. Of those, 370 had been processed by Sept. 22, resulting in payments of $8.2 million.
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Provincially, 415 whole-farm claims had been processed with payments of $8.5 million. Together, the programs allow each claimant to receive up to $145,000.
The relationship between the programs encouraged more producers to sign up, said provincial agriculture minister Corky Evans.
Some didn’t benefit
He said grain farmers in the Peace River region filed 125 of this year’s whole-farm insurance claims, totaling $1.85 million. But the program was “almost no advantage this year” to growers in the Creston Valley, where cherry replanting and sales by the apple-processing plant reduced need for income assistance.
The extended program will also discard the Dec. 31 year-end requirement, allowing for continuous filing. The change is expected to help about half the farmers in the province.
Evans didn’t respond to questions of whether continued low farm incomes would lead to a permanent whole-farm insurance program. He said the federal government should entrench AIDA or some version of it.
“We want to make businesses work and be able to hedge people against risk, whether it be in pricing or on the land,” Evans said.
Three other plans will address the plight of Okanagan apple producers, many of whom received inadequate support from WFIP because of a provincially encouraged replant program.
The province has revived the Transitional Production Assistance Program. Retroactive payments, totaling $4.8 million, will be made to growers engaged in replanting since the program was cut in 1997, and an additional $2.6 million will be available to growers for the rest of the orchard replant program that ends Dec. 31, 2000.
The province also announced Sept. 23 that it will open negotiations next month with growers to revise and extend the orchard replant program for another five years, to 2005. That plan could be worth up to $25 million.
An industry development fund worth $2 million is also proposed.
Growers pleased
Richard Bullock, a Kelowna apple grower who replanted half his 140 acres on the understanding that assistance would be provided under TPAP, was delighted with the announcements.
He’s not worried about the consultation process.
“I would take it as a pretty good indication that the replant program is going to continue,” he said. “It would take a pretty brave man now not to continue with the program, now that (Evans) has announced it.
“It looks good and it looks solid. … I’m just concerned about the general principle, and I think the details are what the discussions are going to be about.”
Bullock added that the new funding shows faith in the province’s tree fruit industry.
