Organic farmer Duane McGregor feels he is in a no-win situation.
The Chaplin, Sask., producer had a good crop of lentils developing when
grasshoppers descended and dined on the pods until they were gone.
Crop insurance wrote the crop off, but when McGregor inquired about
applying for the recently announced advance payment program, he was
shocked to hear his payment might be reduced for not spraying the
hoppers.
“I can’t see how that is fair,” he said.
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“It is like having someone without legs and asking them to run. They
are assessing me a charge I can’t do anything about.”
As an organic producer, McGregor can’t use pesticides. If he does, he
loses his organic certification, a process that takes three years to
get. Organic premiums and coverage levels for crop insurance are higher
than for conventional crops. He expected the policy would recognize
that he can’t use pesticides.
Ken Svenson, Saskatchewan Crop Insurance Corp.’s customer relations
manager, said the corporation is in untried waters when it comes to
organic producers and grasshopper plagues.
In the last severe infestation in the 1980s there were far fewer
organic growers, he said.
Since then, organic production policies have been developed, taking its
traits into account.
For example, some weeds are expected.
“But a 100 percent loss due to weeds is not acceptable under any
farming scenario, including organic,” Svenson said.
The question now is how to apply this principle to insect damage, he
said.
Svenson was contacting organic association executive members to get
their views.
“There are certain things an organic producer can do. Buffer zones are
one of the first things that come to mind,” he said, referring to a
tilled strip of soil that would block hoppers moving from pasture or
ditches into crop.
While it pursues a policy, the corporation is withholding a small
percentage of the payout in the same way it is holding back claims made
by conventional farmers who did not use an insecticide.
The holdback is equal to the price of the chemical.
