Barry Koshman’s heart sank when he took one last look at his soggy farm before the snow flew.
“It looked worse than it did this spring,” said the Sheho, Sask., farmer.
And the spring was not pretty.
Koshman’s farm received almost 180 millimetres of rain last fall followed by 380 mm in May and June.
On the heels of that long, water-soaked crop year, he decided to get a jump on next year’s crop.
That didn’t go well either. Koshman got stuck five times seeding nine quarters of winter wheat this September. Two days after that frustrating exercise, his farm got yet another 90 mm of rain.
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“We are in a swamp. The chances of us getting anything seeded next spring is not looking good,” he said.
If he can’t plant a crop, Koshman wants all of the crop insurance payment he believes he has coming to him, not a portion of it, which is what he received this year.
Koshman is the reeve of the Rural Municipality of Insinger, which sponsored a resolution at the Saskatchewan Association of Rural Municipalities’ 2006 midterm convention calling on Saskatchewan Crop Insurance to dispense its $50 per acre payout without deductions and other clawbacks.
A survey of producers in his area shows only 34 percent of the agricultural land in the RM was seeded in 2006. That may come back to haunt producers if they face similar weather conditions in 2007.
Crop insurance bases its unseeded acreage benefit on how much land a farmer traditionally seeds and insures, which means those who have a chronic problem with flooding get less of a benefit. There is also a five percent deductible that reduces everybody’s payout.
Koshman said the $50 per acre disaster assistance doesn’t come close to compensating producers for their losses, let alone a fraction of that amount.
“We just want the total $50,” he said.
Crop insurance officials say there are sound public policy considerations behind the deductions.
“Seeding intensity is there so that we’re not paying on acres that normally are not seeded. Insurance intensity is there so that we’re not paying on acres that traditionally wouldn’t be insured,” said Stan Benjamin, general manager of Saskatchewan Crop Insurance.
But he didn’t have a good answer when asked why farmers should be penalized for their inability to seed a crop in successive years due to repeated flooding.
“I don’t know. I don’t have any comment on that,” said Benjamin.
Crop insurance isn’t the only farm aid that flooded producers received in 2006.
They got an additional $15 per acre payment from the federal government and $10 from the province, but the latter was also subject to deductions.
Koshman said the total aid package fell far short of covering his losses.
He was only able to seed 15 percent of his 3,000 acres this spring.
“We were sick and tired of pulling a tow rope around.”
It took him three days to plant those 450 acres, triple the time it usually takes. When combined with the extra fuel consumed working the ruts out of his field, he ended up spending more on fuel than the previous year when he seeded all of his land.
If he faces another year of flooding in 2007, he will get even less compensation due to the policy of basing the payment on the previous four years of seeded acreage.
Benjamin said Saskatchewan Crop Insurance and its board of directors are fully aware of producer concerns on this issue.
It will be part of the annual review of crop insurance policies conducted this fall and winter.
“I can’t say whether there will be any changes to the design or not at this time,” he said.
Changes to the crop insurance program are usually announced in February.
