Province renews program in time to help with low market prices
Wednesday, August 4, 2010
by BETTER FARMING STAFF
Bette Jean Crews, president of the Ontario Federation of Agriculture, says the Province’s announcement on Friday that a pilot Risk Management Program for grains and oilseeds will be renewed, is in line with requests for aid for farmers made by Ontario Agricultural Sustainability Coalition.
The coalition had asked that the province launch programs for individual commodities as they were ready, Crews says. Grains and oilseeds growers needed to have their pilot RMP project renewed. The other commodities have to develop numbers for their cost of production formulas using figures that are available from AgriStability.
Crews found Ontario Agriculture Minister Carol Mitchell’s language during announcement encouraging.
Mitchell “did not say, ‘here is a blank cheque for 40 per cent of whatever you tell me,’” says Crews. “She did make a commitment” to work with commodities on programs they are developing.
One of the details of Friday’s announcement is that farmers who started their businesses after January 2008 can apply. “There is an acknowledgment by government that you can’t let anybody fall through the cracks,” Crews says.
An extension of the risk management program for one more year is “what we’ve been lobbying for,” says Leo Guilbeault, chair of Ontario Grains and Oilseeds. “We are thankful to the province for stepping forward.”
According to the ministry, along with new farmers, anyone who participated in the program in 2008 and/or in 2009 is eligible to participate in 2010. Update:
Only new producers who began farming after Jan. 1, 2008, and producers who supported the RMP program in 2008 and 2009 and contributed premiums to the program are eligible for the extended program, says Laura Kobsa, Legislative Affairs and Issues Manager in the office of Agriculture Minister Carol Mitchell.
Guilbeault says he doesn’t know how many farmers are taking advantage of the program. There are 28,000 eligible farmers and more than 80 per cent of those who started after the program was announced in 2007 continued to take part in subsequent years. “As prices stand there should be a payout” for crops sold before the end of June, he says.
There are two different payouts “which reflect the marketing year better than a 12-month period. That’s what makes it work so well,” he says.
The provincial program is “the only game in town right now,” and farmers are still “working on” getting the federal government to commit to taking part as well, Guilbeault says.
Agriculture ministers agreed at their recent annual conference in Saskatchewan last month that the Growing Forward suite of programs, AgriStability and AgriInvest, aren’t doing what they are supposed to. Yet the federal government doesn’t want to change them before a scheduled review in 2013. “Go figure,” Guilbeault says. There’s no reason changes can’t be made before the review in three years, he says. “We are working hard to change their minds to do mid-term adjustments.”
Larry Cowan, owner of Chimo Farms near Melbourne, where Mitchell made the announcement, says he has taken advantage of the RMP program in two out of the last three years. He says the program is worth being enrolled in and “affects the impact the U.S. Farm Bill has on us.”
Cowan, who farms about 3,000 acres of cash crops, compares RMP to crop insurance. He would rather pay the premium and that prices were high enough that he never get a payout. BF