Crop Insurance drops bin measurements

Concerns over worker safety are having a major impact on how crop insurance functions.

In 2021, Saskatchewan Crop Insurance was swamped by claims from the widespread and severe drought. Bin measurements to validate claims were mostly dropped. It would take too long to follow the normal procedure of climbing bins and doing all the measurements to come up with production numbers. There were just too many claims for the adjusters to handle.

This year, claim numbers will be dramatically reduced across most of Saskatchewan as well as in the neighboring provinces. However, drought still damaged production in many parts of southwest and west central Saskatchewan.

Even with much lower claim numbers, bins will again not be measured and the reason is occupational health and safety. There’s too much worker liability involved in climbing bins. Even walking around bins, a worker could trip in a hole and sustain an injury.

So why doesn’t Sask Crop Insurance hire a third-party contractor to measure bins? Well, the contractor would still be subject to the same occupational health and safety oversight.

It makes you wonder how anything ever gets built or repaired. If employees can’t climb and measure bins, how are buildings constructed and power poles installed? How is anyone able to farm? Perhaps well-intentioned rules have become ridiculously onerous.

On the surface, the lack of bin measurement may seem like a win for farmers. Sask Crop Insurance is going to take our word for what we produced and we won’t have to trundle around with an adjuster measuring bins.

Instead, Sask Crop Insurance is going to map out customer yields and compare one to the next to determine whether the submitted production numbers look reasonable. They have also asked customers for the ability to monitor the amount of grain sold.

These are poor substitutes for actual bin measurements. The yield of any particular field can vary from an adjacent field for a multitude of reasons. In a drought situation, an extra half inch or inch of rain at a critical time can make a huge difference and we all know how variable thunderstorms can be.

As for monitoring grain sales, some grain is held for a long time before it goes to market. Some is used for seed and some is fed to on-farm livestock. Flagrant program abuses might eventually be discovered, but even that will take time.

Crop insurance also has a quality factor. Low quality factors down the yield. It’s unclear how that will be handled if adjusters aren’t onsite to draw grain samples.

In Saskatchewan, producers submit a stored grain report along with their seeded acreage report each June and receive the advice that old crop grain should not be mixed with new crop. Otherwise, it may all be considered new crop in the event of a claim. That advice now seems obsolete.

An increasing number of producers have weight scales on their grain carts and have a very accurate measurement of their harvested grain. However, this is still the exception. Without a scale, your estimate might be out by five or even 10 per cent depending upon bushel weights and dockage levels.

Bin measurement isn’t perfect either, but at least it’s a tool to weed out those that may be deliberately under reporting their yields as a way to maximize payments. Measuring bins no doubt delayed yield loss payments, but it appears that an important tool for maintaining the integrity of the program has been lost.