MEDICINE HAT, Alta. — Business risk management programs will top the agenda when Canada’s agriculture ministers meet virtually mid-July.
The ministers were set to meet in person in Winnipeg next week, but postponed until fall to keep hotel rooms free for forest fire evacuees.
Changes to AgriStability announced a month before the April federal election are sure to be discussed, no matter the meeting format. Saskatchewan agriculture minister Daryl Harrison has said they are a priority for him.
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International and internal trade are also on the list.
In March, then-federal agriculture minister Kody Blois said Ottawa would support farmers dealing with tariffs and trade uncertainty by increasing the compensation rate from 80 to 90 per cent and doubling the payment cap to $6 million for the 2025 program year.
He said the government would allow provinces and territories to issue interim payments at a higher rate and initiate targeted advance payments due to tariffs or, for hog producers, if African swine fever occurred.
However, the provinces have not signed on to these changes and will raise them at the meeting.
As the current agricultural framework agreement nears the midway point, talks about BRM reform will ramp up.
Global Ag Risk Solutions (GARS) executive vice-president David Sullivan wants his company and others like it to be part of the discussion. The company, now part of the larger Hub International, offers private crop insurance but finds it hard to compete against the subsidized government programs.
He said premiums have gone up significantly, mainly because of drought and softening grain prices.
He has sent letters to ministers asking for certain private insurers to be included in public funding, noting there are private hail insurers that operate alongside government companies.
Sullivan said GARS is also working on a forage program that would be better than Saskatchewan’s Forage Rainfall Insurance Program (FRIP) because it uses satellite technology rather than weather stations that may or may not accurately reflect the rainfall a crop received.
He said GARS worked with Airbus, stakeholders and the Saskatchewan Crop Insurance Corp. since the fall of 2021 on research to improve forage programs.
“Now SCIC is going to shelve it, and come this spring, they’re starting a pilot project with Planet Labs on a soil moisture reading,” he told reporters at the Cypress Farm and Ranch Show in June.
He said that’s a good idea, but a program is at least a couple of years away, leaving producers with the FRIP.
Sullivan said FRIP has worked the last several years because of widespread drought. When there was more rainfall, everybody hated it, he added.
GARS has developed technology using weather data from several sources on a 1.5-mile grid, and Sullivan said it could be in the market next spring.
“But fundamentally, a private company will never launch a product into the ranch and forage space in Canada because A, it’s very risky, and B, the market’s too small that we just will never be able to compete against government subsidized programs,” he said.
Private companies have to be profitable, and farmers and ranchers have to pay enough premiums over time to make that happen. Competing against a 60 per cent subsidy is impossible, he said.
Sullivan said his letters to ministers ask for legislative changes to add approved private insurers for funding.
“It seems like there’s an appetite for a pilot project of delivery of a private product that has some public funding,” he said.
“Exactly what that would look like we don’t know because really the first step is changing the legislation to even allow for it to happen.”
Sullivan said time is a concern because the next BRM programs will be finalized for April 1, 2028.
