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- Written by Glenda-Lee Vossler
- Published: 22 December 2019
The Western Canadian Wheat Growers are disappointed in the lack of action coming out of this week’s Federal, Provincial and Territorial Agriculture Ministers Meeting.
A release from the Wheat Growers says this week’s communiqué from the Ag Ministers meeting shows a federal government that is completely out of touch with grain farmers and the challenges that they are facing.
President Günter Jochum says for years farm groups have been calling for a fix to AgriStability.
He notes he’s pleased to see the change with private insurance but says more needs to be done; the ministers talk about tweaking AgriStability but that’s just not going to cut it.
“Having another report from government bureaucrats and testing pilot programs in select jurisdictions is a lump of coal in every grain farmers’ Christmas stocking.”
Jochum says AgriStability would come in really handy for a number of producers this year with many struggling due to the challenging harvest, a rail strike, international trade issues, carbon tax and more.
“In the short term, it would be a really quick fix to take the margins from 70% to 85%. I mean, it had been there in the past, it’s about $300 million extra that would cost this year. And this year, we had a really tough year, where there would be lots of money flowing to farmers.”
In a release, the Western Canadian Wheat Growers says when it comes to making changes to AgriStability doing another government report and testing pilot programs in select jurisdictions is a lump of coal in every grain farmer’s Christmas stocking.
“We’ve had all these problems with international trade, with a terrible harvest, with the carbon tax and on and on and on. And you know business risk management programs, we have some in place right now, but AgriStability has 70% coverage. It again is not enough.”
