It’s a beautiful sunny fall day, ideal for combining, but Berkley Ferguson has time to talk to a reporter.
The Boyle, Alta. farmer has all the time in the world – he never seeded a crop.
Ferguson is one of hundreds of farmers north of Edmonton who never planted any crop or only planted a part of their farm because of the extremely wet spring.
“It just rained and rained and rained.”
Crop insurance estimates anywhere from 25 percent to 70 percent of the crops in seven municipalities were never seeded.
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Many people are worried farmers in their area can’t survive another year of lost income and have asked the provincial government for help.
A group of municipal councillors met with the province’s all-Conservative Standing Committee on Agriculture to ask for a $70 an acre unseeded acreage payment to help save some of the farms. They estimate there are almost half a million unseeded acres in seven municipalities.
“We’ve got nobody to turn to but our provincial government,” said Ferguson, reeve of the County of Athabasca.
Use other programs
It’s unlikely the provincial government will hand over the $34 million requested by the group. The government has said any agriculture assistance must come through crop insurance or the Farm Income Disaster Program.
Only about 30 percent of farmers in the area carry crop insurance and FIDP money wouldn’t kick in for another year.
“We have an agriculture disaster on our hands and they don’t seem to be listening,” said Ferguson.
Ed Stelmach, Alberta’s agriculture minister, said the province is not implementing any more ad hoc programs.
“We have crop insurance and the farm income disaster plan to look after those areas where farmers need extra support,” Stelmach said.
He added the pro-vince realizes few farmers take crop insurance so it is working to make changes to the crop insurance program, which should be announced in January.
The government is also considering loosening rules for Alberta financial assistance loans.
