Manitoba farmers who find themselves stretching to get their crop in the ground by crop insurance deadlines will have a little more room to move this year.
The Manitoba Crop Insurance Corporation has announced it will have more flexible deadlines starting this spring after reviewing the difficult time some farmers had last year, including those in the flooded Red River Valley.
This year, farmers can get insurance for acres planted up to 10 days after the deadline, but coverage will be reduced by 20 percent during the extension period.
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For example, a farmer who planted barley by the June 15 deadline would be eligible for full coverage under crop insurance. A farmer who planted barley between June 16 and June 25 would be eligible for 80 percent coverage.
The general manager of Manitoba’s farm lobby group said the extension is an improvement.
But Linda MacNair said members of Keystone Agricultural Producers have been lobbying the government for a long time to move deadlines for full coverage back one week.
“It [the extension period] certainly does give farmers a little more flexibility, and that’s good, but it’s not our preferred solution,” she said.
Farmers will also have more choices for unseeded land insurance.
They can buy $25 or $50 of coverage per acre in case floods or excess moisture prevent them from getting on the land in spring.
In previous years, farmers had to buy unseeded land insurance by Aug. 31. Maximum coverage was $40 per acre with a deductible based on total acres rather than total flooded acres.
The deductible made it impractical for farmers with some low-lying but more well-drained land to insure against flooding.
But this year, farmers had until Dec. 1 to sign up. The premium is charged on total acres, but the deductible will be 10 percent of the full amount of the unseeded land claim.
Forages and winter cereals aren’t eligible.
MacNair said the changes make the unseeded land insurance more useful for farmers. But she added farmers should consider the protection they get from the lower-coverage extension period before buying the unseeded land insurance.
“I think farmers are going to have to do a careful analysis of how that 10-day extension impacts their decision on purchasing unseeded acreage coverage,” she said.
