Unseeded acres Sask. ag minister says inspection procedures for crop inspections will be reviewed
Some Saskatchewan farmers are still angry that they didn’t receive crop insurance coverage for all their unseeded acres this year.
Delegates to the Saskatchewan Association of Rural Municipalities’ midterm convention said they bought enhanced insurance but then didn’t get the benefit.
John Olinik, reeve of the RM of Kellross, told the convention that agriculture minister Lyle Stewart encouraged farmers to increase their coverage.
“Crop insurance customers were told that the claims would be treated in the same manner as other years,” he said.
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“Well, that obviously didn’t happen.”
He said a larger farmer in his RM received $5,000 for 500 unseeded acres. The problem was he paid $9,000 to increase his coverage from $70 to $100 per acre.
“Virtually nobody got what they thought they should get,” Olinik said.
“We think we were treated unfairly in this situation, and we feel that the government, the ag minister, should revisit these claims.”
During his address to the delegates, Stewart said producers should qualify if their land was in good seeding condition last fall but too wet this spring.
However, he said the program is not designed to compensate farmers for permanent or semi-permanent water bodies, and there has been no change in that policy.
He said farmers made so many claims because of flooding in the previous two years that inspectors couldn’t get to them all. This year, they were able to get back to proper procedure.
Stewart said he has told crop insurance to be flexible and work with producers.
“In many cases they provided a secondary inspection that resulted in a change in the compensation paid,” Stewart said.
“I’ve also instructed officials to review our files to ensure that producers were treated fairly.”
He said crop insurance is looking at how the issue can be better addressed in the future.
The matter was also raised in the legislature during question period Nov. 7. Agriculture critic Cathy Sproule noted the SARM resolution and asked Stewart what he was doing about farmers’ concerns.
She said the definition of permanent water body was changed after producers had bought their insurance.
Stewart repeated that crop insurance is being flexible and that he had reinforced that need with senior crop insurance officials the previous day.
Producers who are still unhappy, even after a second adjustment, may appeal, and the minister said that has happened in some cases.
He said crop insurance has paid $740 million in unseeded acreage coverage since 2010.
SARM delegates also passed a resolution asking that the deadline for unseeded acreage coverage be extended from June 20 to July 10.
Stewart said SARM resolutions are taken seriously and the request would be discussed. However, he said the program must be sustainable.
