VANCOUVER – A group of Saskatchewan farmers, spearheaded by two former unsuccessful rural Liberal candidates, wants Liberal leader Michael Ignatieff to consider a radical revision in ideas of how to help farmers.
They propose that Ottawa offer prairie farmers a per-acre upfront cash payment instead of the after-the-fact payments now offered by the federal Growing Forward programs that they say are broken.
“If we promise to fix the programs that are there now, it won’t work,” Chaplin, Sask., farmer Ron Gleim said May 1 at a rural workshop during the federal Liberal party convention that proclaimed Ignatieff leader.
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“Those programs cannot be fixed. They do not work.”
In an April 29 letter to Ignatieff, Gleim and Lafleche, Sask., farmer Duane Filson said a Liberal proposal to offer an alternative to the historic margin-based programs offered for more than a decade would attract rural votes.
“You have our attention as Liberals as we want to deliver votes and ultimately more seats for the party in the prairie West,” they wrote.
“To do this, we have some ideas we need to discuss with you that will not increase the cost to the federal budget.”
At the core of the proposal is replacing AgriStability and AgriInvest payments with a per-acre payment, providing cash that farmers could then use to plan their business year.
It suggests $20 per acre in Saskatchewan to bring $1 billion into the province each year.
Farmers would know what they are receiving and could pool their resources to negotiate better input prices or make other business decisions or negotiate with their creditors.
It would be predictable income.
Filson said there could be a sunset clause on the program so that it would end after a decade, depending on how it worked. For the first two years of the program, farmers could be offered a choice between existing margin-based programs and an upfront per-acre payment to see which is the more popular.
Farmers taking the cash would have to agree to environmental management and business planning courses.
In an interview, Gleim said a disparate group of farmers recently discussed the idea at a meeting on his farm. The idea of a simple cash payment transcended ideology.
He said a prominent cattle sector representative agreed, as did National Farmers Union president Stewart Wells in a later conversation.
“One thing we can all agree on is that the current programs are not working and any party that promises to tinker to make them better will not win farmer support,” said Gleim, who ran unsuccessfully in the southwestern Saskatchewan riding of Cypress Hills-Grasslands against MP David Anderson.
“What farmers need is cash flow and money that will allow them to make appropriate decisions.”
He said it would then be up to farmers receiving money to survive or fail on the basis of their own decisions.
In their letter to Ignatieff, Gleim and Filson said their plan would prompt farmers who have been alienated from the Liberals for a long time to give the party a second look.
“(It would) create a program that will be easy to understand not only by farmers but also by urban folk as well for it is they who will ultimately benefit,” they wrote.
“(It would) rebuild the family farm and encourage the sons and daughters of this generation of land stewards to build a future for their families.”
While Ignatieff had not responded by last weekend, Liberal agriculture critic Wayne Easter, a key player in developing the party’s agriculture policy, told Gleim he wanted more detail.
