OTTAWA — Within weeks, the government will be announcing a new equity lease program for the Farm Credit Corp. that will allow its lessees to build a fund to eventually buy the land.
It will be a version of the “agricultural equity development program” promised by the Liberals in the election.
It was a program FCC officials already had been considering.
Agriculture minister Ralph Goodale said FCC officials at Regina head office have proven themselves “very creative to turning their minds to the concepts we were talking about in the red book (of Liberal campaign promises) and seeing how those concepts can be brought to life.”
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He said in an interview the first farm financing innovation to be announced under the Liberals, sometime this winter, will be an equity lease program. On Feb. 18, FCC representative Kellie Stevens said in an interview from Regina the “technical details” of the program are being finished.
“The minister hopes to announce something soon, maybe in March, hopefully sooner.”
Under the program, farmers leasing land taken by the FCC in foreclosure action will be able to supplement their rental payments and have the add-on accumulate as a down payment to purchase.
In the election campaign, the Liberals said it would be a creative way to help FCC reduce its massive land holding, particularly on the Prairies, while giving more farmers a chance to get into the business.
“Lessees would have an incentive to buy back the land and beginning farmers would be given entry into the business,” said the campaign agriculture policy paper.
Other promises, including a vendor loan guarantee program and a long-term mortgage program, will have to wait a while longer.
According to FCC statistics, it owned 1,286,694 acres of farmland on Feb. 5, including 1,1154,085 acres in Saskatchewan and 77,939 acres in Manitoba.
Sell to private sector
During the interview, Goodale was asked if he would consider selling off all or part of the federal farm lender to the private sector as part of the government’s deficit-reduction campaign. He would not rule it out, although he said there are no proposals under study now.
Goodale said he would not resist “creative ideas” on farm financing and the FCC. However, he said it must continue to exist as a vehicle for implementing federal farm financial policy objectives.
FCC acts as good competition for private lenders and can be used to deliver programs to help young farmers get onto the land, for example.
Whether it remains wholly government-owned or a public-private mix, however, “I would want to make sure the FCC is there as an institution that can play an important public policy role in farm financial matters,” said the minister.
