Consultations are beginning on the next five-year Canadian agricultural policy framework, but how different will it be from previous versions?
Delegates to last week’s Canadian Federation of Agriculture annual meeting want the short-term AgriStability enhancements proposed by the federal government.
Longer-term changes are less clear. AgriStability has been under review for some time and federal minister Marie-Claude Bibeau has promised something better.
During a panel discussion Manitoba cow-calf producer and backgrounder Tyler Fulton and British Columbia nursery operator Dave Sept both said more education about risk management and more equitable programs are required in the new agreement.
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Fulton said AgriStability is ineffective on his operation unless he were to have a complete disaster. That’s because his farm has limited allowable expenses due to its self-sufficiency.
“The program with the most significant impact on our farm’s financial risk is livestock price insurance,” he said.
However, he also works for a hog marketing co-operative and noted that the same program doesn’t work for that sector because it’s too costly and there are better tools available.
Fulton said the government doesn’t provide premium cost support for price insurance as it does for crop insurance.
Inequities like that concern him.
“Those sectors that can take advantage of the crop insurance program with such good support from both provincial and federal levels inherently have lower risk associated with it,” Fulton said. “But there are still sectors that don’t have access to any type of program like that. So what happens is that those investment dollars and the expansion of the sector with that lower risk profile ends up dominating the other sectors.”
Fulton added that he believes AgriInvest should be re-evaluated.
He said risk management practices are best directed at the farm level but, “I’m not convinced that AgriInvest provides an incentive to develop these practices.”
Fulton suggested the money in AgriInvest be used for programs at the farm or commodity level so that farmers learn to manage their own risks rather than just receiving cash payments from the program with no expected outcome.
Sept said he qualifies only for AgriStability and AgriInvest because there is no crop insurance for his business. He said there is greater need for producers in all sectors to understand their risks and how to manage them and he said commodity associations and producer organizations should do more outreach to educate their members.
