Rarely do governments act so quickly and decisively. I was amazed when the meeting of federal and provincial agriculture ministers resulted in a program announcement for flooded Prairie farmland. Usually the closing news conference to these meetings is short on tangible action and long on bafflegab. There is no perfect program to deal with the widespread flooding problems, but the announced program strikes a good balance. The $30 an acre in compensation applies to both unseeded land as well as cropland that’s been flooded and that’s a healthy approach. It will be relatively easy to calculate and money will be able to flow quickly. The extra assistance is significant, particularly when added to the Unseeded Acreage Payments and Establishment Benefits available through crop insurance. There will always be some who says the assistance should have been greater. That’s the stance being taken by NDP Leader Dwain Lingenfelter, but past NDP governments were reluctant to cost share even the existing farm safety nets and their response to disasters was to beat up on Ottawa for not fixing the problem. The federal / provincial AgriRecovery response to the drought that affected the livestock sector was late and it picked winners and losers. This AgriRecovery response is timely and relatively well designed. I’m Kevin Hursh.
I had a heated discussion yesterday with a producer from east central Saskatchewan. He only got 25 per cent of his crop seeded and he supports the idea of increasing the Unseeded Acreage Payment to $100 an acre. The less than $50 an acre currently available under crop insurance is going to leave him in a bad position. By comparison, his crop insurance coverage for canola is about $220 an acre, while wheat is at $140. I’m opposed to doubling the Unseeded Acreage Payment because that would be out of sync with the rest of the crop insurance coverage levels. At $100 an acre, unseeded acreage would be more lucrative than what many producers have for full coverage. I appreciate the position of producers with a large unseeded land base and I was feeling a bit hypocritical after the extended discussion because I was able to get my land seeded. As fate would have it, later in the day my farm was hit with two or three inches of rain in a very short period of time. There are water washes and sloughs everywhere. It’s a mess. On top of that, I wonder how many times I’ll need to spray my chickpeas with fungicide when they’re getting rained on every second day. The problems producers are facing go beyond the unseeded acreage. I’m Kevin Hursh.
There is no magic wand that governments can wave to fix all the problems created by the abnormal weather this spring. The AgriRecovery program isn’t much better than all the ad hoc programs governments have invented over the years, because AgriRecovery seems to have no set parameters. However, there are some special problems that have been created this spring where governments could perhaps step in and play a role. One of those special problems involves the spring cash advance. A producer emailed me pointing out that if you took a spring cash advance and you weren’t able to seed the acres outlined or if the crop doesn’t establish on those acres, the outstanding advance comes due 30 days after the submission of the seeded acreage report. Under more normal circumstances, that would seem reasonable, but this year a large amount of money has been spent on inputs that you may be stuck with. Inoculants have no value after their season of use and fuel can’t be returned. Fertilizer can also be a problem to return, especially blended fertilizer. Producers have been returning seed when possible, but it’s sometimes subject to significant restocking charges. It’s hard to know how many producers are in a crunch with a spring cash advance on unseeded acres, but it would seem reasonable to provide some latitude to producers caught in this situation. I’m Kevin Hursh.
If the weather forecasts are close to being correct, flooding concerns are going to get worse before they get better. The weather gurus could see this big weather system developing for days and they’ve been in agreement that it’s going to drop a lot of rain. It’s rare to see such widespread heavy rainfall warnings. The abnormal spring is the top conversation topic among producers attending the Farm Progress Show in Regina. Some producers completed seeding in a relatively timely manner and they don’t have serious issues with excess moisture, at least not yet. At the other end of the spectrum, there are horror stories about getting tractors and sprayers stuck, massive areas that are unseeded and big areas of fields that were seeded but are now under water. It’s normal at this time of year to envy the areas that have had good rains. This year, the luckiest producers are the ones that have received the lowest precipitation totals. When crops are lost in June, it’s typically due to drought. This year, excess rain is going to result in a huge production shortfall. I’m Kevin Hursh.
The National Farmers Union is calling for a full $50 an acre payment on all unseeded acres and an additional $50 an acre top-up payment. The top-up would be limited to 2,000 acres per farm. The NFU is correct when it says that no farmer is going to receive the full $50 an acre currently available under crop insurance. While it would make sense to drop the silly 5 per cent deductible, it doesn’t make sense to ignore the seeding intensity factor, as the NFU is proposing. If you do away with that, you’ll be paying producers for land they had planned to leave fallow anyway. As for the idea of a top-up payment of $50 an acre on up to 2,000 acres per farm, that would create many inequities. A total of $100 an acre is more than some producers are guaranteed under crop insurance when they’re able to seed a crop, particularly cereal crops. The NFU proposal would make it desirable to have unseeded land versus land that’s flooded and crops that are at a huge frost risk. The NFU release doesn’t address the issue of producers not enrolled in crop insurance, but presumably the $50 an acre top-up would be available on all unseeded cropland, whereas land that’s seeded, but not enrolled in crop insurance would get nothing. The NFU is correctly identifying the huge income shortfall that’s going to occur this year, but their proposed response carries all sorts of problems. I’m Kevin Hursh.