Manitoba Pork Council is encouraging agricultural producers from all sectors to express their opinions on a proposed top-up to the AgriStability program.
The Board of Directors of Manitoba Pork Council has endorsed, as a discussion paper, a proposed companion program to AgriStability.
AgriStability Plus was developed as an insurance-based program, which would be underwritten by the federal government with participating producers being responsible for premiums.
Manitoba Pork Council Vice Chair Bryan Ferris says the top-up program was designed to take the variability out of AgriStability, to be bankable and predictable and to provide a full cost of production.
The program consists of basically of four main components.
The first one is a full cost of production top-up to AgriStability.
That portion would carry a producer premium and the producer would be responsible for the entire premium.
It would not be subsidized by government.
The rationale behind that is that that would make it trade compatible with WTO or NAFTA.
The second thing is that it will be a national program that is whole farm and would cover all commodities.
It doesn’t matter where you live in Canada or what agriculture commodity you produce, you would be covered by this program if you chose to enroll in it.
We are proposing as well as a voluntary program that producers could or could not take based on what their best management decision would be at the farm gate.
The third point is that it would be 100 percent bankable which it will be and 100 percent predictable which it will be, which would take out the points of aggravation, frustration and quite frankly points that have cost agriculture producers across the country money with regards to AgriStability.
We’re having to wait on payments, not sure what they’re going to get, all that sort of thing.
Ferris notes there is a strategic review of Canada’s current suite of business risk management programs underway now so the hope is to have something on the table for Canada’s agriculture ministers early in the process.
Details on the proposal are available at manitobapork.com.
Source: Farmscape.Ca
