Canada’s farm lobby must increase pressure on governments to improve the year-old farm safety net system that is already showing its flaws, says a prairie farm leader.
Ian Wishart, president of Manitoba’s Keystone Agricultural Producers, said the margin-based AgriStability program introduced with a flurry last year by the Conservatives as a replacement for the unpopular Canadian Agricultural Income Stabilization program is inadequate.
He said prolonged low incomes and losses in the livestock sector mean the program is basing payouts on ever-declining margins. Introduction of country-of-origin meat rules in the United States will make it worse by limiting exports and lowering export prices.
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“A lot of us were concerned with introduction of yet another margin-based program,” said Wishart. “Alberta has the longest experience with this type of program and they have had to revise it a number of times and do top-ups. There is a flaw.”
He said rising input costs and rules that arbitrarily exclude some input costs from the margin formula also are a problem.
“Inputs are a huge issue for us and as soon as farmers started to make money, others wanted a piece of it and the program doesn’t really deal with that adequately,” he said. “What you really are doing with this program is protecting a portion of declining profits and that is not sustainable.”
Governments seem determined to resist calls for ad hoc payments to fill in the gaps in safety net programs, said Wishart.
“I don’t think there is any appetite to look at ad hoc,” he said. “Any time you mention ad hoc to these guys, they are very adamant that will not happen. We are looking at the agri-flex promise of $500 million but have not seen the details.”
However, the KAP president said several provinces, including Saskatchewan and Alberta, have indicated a willingness to reconsider the formula for determining margins under the AgriStability program.
“This has got to be a priority for the CFA (Canadian Federation of Agriculture) moving forward,” he said.
Wishart was commenting on issues facing the new CFA president who will be elected in late February at the federation’s annual meeting in Ottawa. Longtime president Bob Friesen from Manitoba resigned in September to run unsuccessfully as a Liberal candidate in Winnipeg.
Wishart said investing in food safety and developing systems of food traceability will be huge issues for the next CFA president.
Flaws in other components of the new safety net system also will be on the table for the new president, including trying to win improvements in the AgriInvest program, he said.
Wishart said the long-promised production insurance program to include livestock should be promoted. Also the disaster payment portion of the new system needs revising.
“AgriRecovery is a lot harder to trigger than we want or expected,” said the farmer from Portage la Prairie, Man.
