Cheques from Ottawa’s one-time $600 million fund that launches the AgriInvest program could be out to farmers as early as late February.
As much as $360 million will be available to prairie farmers.
Danny Foster, director general of Agriculture Canada’s business risk management program development branch, told a news conference that letters to farmers informing them of their eligibility based on average allowable net sales from 2000-04 were to be sent by year’s end.
The department will start processing requests as soon as farmers return the letters indicating if they want the cash or prefer to leave the money in the AgriInvest account.
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“We will get the cheques out within 30 to 60 days and generally closer to the 30,” said Foster.
He said a typical farm with $100,000 in allowable net sales would be eligible for $2,630. At the other end of the farm size scale, a farm with $1 million in eligible net sales would qualify for up to $30,000.
The producer account fund, similar to the now defunct but popular Net Income Stabilization Account program, allows farmers to contribute to a personal account and then receive matching government funds.
The money can be withdrawn to cover the first 15 percent of margin decline.
However, farmers will not have to invest seed money to receive their share of the $600 million.
Foster held the news conference to announce that enough provinces have signed the federal-provincial agreement to allow the launch of programs designed to replace agricultural policy framework programs that expire March 31.
The new programs will include AgriInvest, AgriStability to cover margin loss of more than 15 percent, an expanded production insurance program and a national disaster program.
Federal agriculture minister Gerry Ritz said in a statement it was the fulfilment of a Conservative promise.
“This seals the deal on our commitment to replace CAIS (Canadian Agricultural Income Stabilization) with better programs.”
He said most of the $400 million in cost-of-production payments announced by prime minister Stephen Harper last summer has been sent to farmers and the rest will flow soon.
However, Liberal agriculture critic Wayne Easter scoffed at the claim of a bright new day.
“This is about the sixth time I’ve heard the $600 million announced so it should be up to $3.6 billion,” he said.
“What I’m seeing on the ground is that farmers are getting frustrated with the constant announcements with no cash coming.”
Easter said a farmer had called his office to announce that he received his cost of production cheque for $68.
“That payment has nothing to do with cost of production,” Easter said.
“It is aimed at the non-farming community to convince them the government is doing something for farmers. As we discovered in government, a billion dollars spread nationally doesn’t make a dent so $400 million really means almost nothing.”
The statement from the government suggested all the programs promised under the new policy framework were “moving forward,” but in fact some have not yet gotten off the ground.
The statement said one of the programs is AgriInsurance, “which includes crop insurance and production insurance and is being expanded to include more commodities.”
In fact, Foster said the plan to expand the crop insurance program to cover livestock and horticulture still is in the early stages of development. Pilot projects could be started this year.
“What this is is a commitment to put a plan in place to provide insurance for livestock and other commodities,” he said.
