Agricorp extends deadlines for reporting and paying premiums on fall-seeded crops

Wednesday, October 1, 2014

by SUSAN MANN

Agricorp, the provincial crown corporation that runs Ontario’s crop insurance system, has added seven more days to most of its annual fall deadlines for planting fall-seeded crops, reporting acres and making premium payments.

Stephanie Charest, Agricorp spokesperson, says the changes are permanent. For fall-seeded crops for the 2015 program year, the deadline to make coverage changes and report final acres is Nov. 8, while Nov. 22 is the deadline to pay premiums.

Planting deadlines vary across the province and are available on Agricorp’s 2015 planting deadlines guide.
 
To qualify for production insurance, farmers must plant their crop by the deadline listed in Agricorp’s guide. The crops covered in the changes include winter wheat, organic winter spelt, winter canola and winter barley.

In making the changes, Agricorp notes in an announcement on its website advances in farm management techniques and hardier varieties of wheat were some of the reasons why it changed the deadlines. Agricorp’s research included input from the provincial agriculture ministry’s cereal crops specialist, an historic review of the planting dates compared to production insurance reseeding and production claims, and climate data for the past 30 years, the announcement says.

The data “shows most producers plant as close to the optimal seeding date as possible but are influenced by weather and the previous year’s harvest,” Agricorp’s announcement says.

For this year, the delayed growing season “will likely require producers to plant later than normal,” the notice says.

In other winter wheat news, Agricorp paid out $8.7 million in reseeding claims in the spring, the highest level in 10 years, Charest notes. The reseeding benefit pays farmers $85 per acre to help cover the costs of getting a new crop in the ground in time for the growing season.

Weather contributed to the high level of reseeding claims with the crop facing cool, wet conditions at planting last year, very low winter temperatures followed by a cool spring, Agricorp says in a written notice. Yields reported for production insurance were about average, with some areas having better than average yields.

Agricorp paid about $5.2 million in final claims to customers who had yield shortfalls at harvest. BF