Agristability

[Hopperbin]

Did anyone get payment from 09 crop year yet? I just had a nasty talk with my accountant today. The form they sent in and gave me does not even show if I triggered or not, what BS. Payment should already have been made, I guess I must do their work for them.

[newguy]

I phoned agstability and mine had been recieved but not asigned to someone. They said could be 90 days from when received. Sound like to me accountant just sends in info and most calculations are done at agstability. On the bright side when I phoned I talked to someone in Melville that was easy to get info from..

[BreadWinner]

Im worried that I wont even qualify for this year with 75% not seeded and 25% not worth keeping, what happened last year that makes you qualify. You should be just sumbitting you inventories to agrisability now and you should get a payment buy Sept if you are in a trigger position. Your accountant cant tell if you will get a payment they have to spin the BIG WHEEL to find out if you WIN a payment. Dont spend that money just in case they made a mistake and you have to send it back.

[burnt]

I opted out.

Because if I want to work in a steaming pile of dogshit I can do it in the back yard without all the paperwork.

[burnt]

My feeling is that there will be no payments relating to the 2009 year unless you had unique circumstances or an extremely high reference margin ($200/acre)

As far as the comments all of you made regarding the ability of your accountant to calculate the payment - that is BS and absolute laziness or lack of knowledge of farm accounting and programs of your provider.

If the adminstration is able to calculate the payment, why can't anyone else?

My accountant provides a package every year outlining the payment or distance from, my reference margin for the upcoming year along with other things. In the 2 years our farm received payments (2004 & 2005) the initial payment estimate from my accountant was within 5% and the only reason it was different was because of the value that was debated on a specialty crop inventory. The most interesting (frustrating) thing is that in each year, it took 3 adjustment requests for the adminstration to get it right. The mistakes by the processing was absolutely unbelievable. Little things like entering the wrong inventory code and price to missing deferrals. I just couldn't believe it.

But without my payment estimate, I would not have known that it was $75,000 less than it should have been.

Guys, if your accoutant claims that, give him a kick in the ...

If he is not estimating Agristability, he must be simply sending in your farm account book to find out you owe $40,000 in tax as well

[Burbert]

This program is bizzare and unstable at the best of times. An accountant that claims to know what he is doing and can figure out the program is a BS artist, car salesman type!! The program is directly administered by the Feds, and they can crank it up or let farmers dangle in the wind. Whichever is politically expedient at any given moment. It is a total BS program, just like everything else in Comedian farming..

[Burbert]

Well Burbert, you have brainwashed yourself, if that is what you believe. You have never been properly shown how the program works because your guys probably throws the numbers on the form.

As a farmer, I totally understand the program and the calculations and how they are arrived. Its not about cheating or knowing how to "work the program". Its all a matter of reporting the correct information every year.

A half hour with with the right person would tell you a lot. Unfortunately it may not be the answer's you are looking for if you have not had success in the past, or reported your information properly.

You can believe what you want to believe, but not everyone would agree with you.

[BreadWinner]

What drives me crazy about this program is the unfairness in the margin calculation. You can be an established farmer with breakeven rotten luck for years, Then Joe Blow new cocky young farmer shows up across the road with no margin history. He is trigering payments every year in and year out beacause they give him a nice high margin based on some number they pull out of the air. It isnt what you know about this program it is how lucky you are and how stupid they are. Penalize the establised guy and reward the young waistful one. By the way I am 35.

[BreadWinner]

If you want to debate those issues with the government you have a valid discussion.

The question I would have then is if "Joe Blow" starts up across the road and is given start up margins is he involved with someone else and hence should potentially be combined with another operation to relect the "true picture".

I am sure there are many father and son operations are filing separate but should be looked at on a combined basis. Many think this would work against you but it also could help you. I think a lot of "overpayments" were the result of the adminstration catching up this issue.

With the local adminstration being done at crop insurance, the production data will have to match up. Joint crop insurance contracts will highlight the operations that need to be combined.

Its only fair and reduces the manipulation and abuse of the program. In the fine print it states that when you are submitting an application that the data is as accurate as possible.

If people think they are going to work the program over, they may want to consider the penalty of losing any benefit received and being fined and equivalent amount for being false and missleading. The gov't took a stand with this type of issues with tax, they will follow the same process with this program as well.

By the way, I am 39 and my business and finance experience has greatly helped my understanding of issues like these

[BreadWinner]

I hate it when you get penalized for being honest. The last over payments were forgiven to those who cheated, good for those guys. I guess I will have to learn how to push my way up to the trough and eat like the rest of the pigs. It looks as though that is the only way to get ahead now days. I still dont understand when people say that you arnt using the program correctly if you arnt getting a payment. How can you change a profit into a loss without lying about your inventories or your prepurchases for next year.

[BreadWinner]

The overpayments that were forgiven had nothing to do with inventories or cheating. As I understand it, it was more an issue relating to structure change formula's, forage pricing etc. The applicants overpaid had reported the correct data, it was the adminstration that made the error. That is why they never clawed it back. It would have been different if it was farmer data submission errors.

It is hard for any administration to see what is going on in every single operation. They are only going to see averages.

You are correct in your comments about not being able to change what is correct. Is it an issue of areas such as classification of expenses on your tax returns in each year (separating interest from input costs, custom work charges including in chemical etc).

I think the biggest issue is cut off of the inventory at year end. How many producers give that number as of March 31 when their tax is getting done?

I will agree that the program has a fault in that if you have experienced poor years in a row that your reference margin is very low. Tell my why some farms are able to manage through it? Luck is part of it, but when I saw the database my accountant had in various RM's all across his region and you have reference margins in every RM from $50 per acre to $200 , what is each of them doing different? It didn't matter the size of the farm or the RM.

[Hopperbin]

Your right Sask.99 your accountant should give you a statement regarding your reference margin and if you trigger or not. That is what I was used to with MNP.
FBC sent my agristability in in Feb. I guess at that time there was no year end prices set for inventory so inventory adjustment cannot be done so a trigger statement cannot be sent to me. By now they sure as hell should have the year end prices set. Reason I think I trigger is I planted canola on pea stubble last year a lot of it, it was bent over crappy specialty oil shit. We spent triple time swathing it and then it averaged 15 to 20 percent moisture at harvest plus lower yield. We took it off but not without spoilage. So I have spoiled canola listed in inventory. When do they set the year end inventory prices Sask99? I prefer it in years past when it was set I think near end of Feb following year. At least you know what you had coming then. I am so fed up with FBC you phone in and always talk to a couple assholes that don't know anything first and give a line of bullshit.

[Burbert]

WOW, WOW, is all that I kin say. You big boys are lining up at the trough toooooo! An all this time, I thought yous was so smart marketin from home and grown the best of the best. Wit brokers bangin on yer door fer yer 80% of all the grain grown. Now it turns out yer just like all the rest, nobody knows what their doin. Whinning and snivelling is still the main theme in farmin it seems. Gagstability yeah lets have more and more gagstability, me and my accounter kin get rich....

[sewen]

To me these program is just creating an unlevel playing field, huge greedy farmers with all the shiney equipment getting large sums of money. Small guys that are making money but getting ahead very slowly get nothing. To me it's too much like being on welfare, so it doesn't bother me that I have never received anything from it. Sounds like some know how to milk the system though.

[skhadenuf]

Oh my God sask99 all those lines and words to basically say that clerical errors are the reason some farmers have poor margin???? Uhm well, let me see doesn't having good weather and growing a crop have something maybe to do with it?

but as with most bullshitters the more you talk the more is revealed, you have admitted finally that the majority of clerical errors rest within CAIS itself, and just as you stated above it's a nightmare to get those errors corrected yeah that's all stuff we've been saying on here for years.

Are you really saying the reason that people's margins differ from 0 to 200 is because of clerical errors or as you mentioned on another thread because farmers are not declaring personal fuel on their income tax. Are you kiddin us all?????

the things you are saying come exactly almost word for word out of the ag department which really reveals who you are and that the ag department is in total disfunction and out of touch of it's own program and farming in gereral.
When ag ministers rely upon geeky pencil pushers to design programs you get the fu--ing mess we have now.

The free ride for the Conservatives and Sask Party is over. They took our votes for granted, put as littly money and effort as possible into changing the CAIS program and crop insurance into something better, simpler, and faster. There were areas like ours and freewheat that had total wipeouts but because not as big an area they were willing to forego the votes. Others had relatively good crops so the CAIS and crop insurance weren't even an issue. But now the shit has hit the fan and the reality that they have no real plan for a disaster no real program that deals with declining coverages and slow, bureacratic, accountant friendly, farmer nightmare details have come to the forefront.
Just a month ago Ritz stated the programs will look after everyone, well obviously the fact they are in the back room scrambling to figure out what the hell to do speaks volumes, they don't have a fu--ing clue, because these programs are so complicated. The problem is he has to save face and put some spin on this mess so there are the paid peddlers pushing the idea that if only your clerical errors were corrected Ritz's Cais would have worked. The pencil pushers have influenced the ag department to develop so farm specific programs that now they realize they actually should have concentrated on maintaining a bottom line of income and not whether or not your cow is 1000# or 1150# not whether or not your wheat is #1 or #2 but instead a simple program guaranteeing you a basic amount regardless of past weather or price fluctuations that drag you down financially for years.

Get the fu--ing pencil pushers out of the back room get some farmers that know what's going on.
Design a program you buy a certain amount of coverage, whether it comes from more dollars or bushels ie 10 bushels at 5bucks or 5 bushels at 10 bucks, as long as you get your guarantee. Get rid of the thousands of overlapping jobs in cais and crop insurance, that money iself would go a long way to pay premiums. If you produce better than that good for you you will prosper further.

Ritz would gain a whole lot of respect if he just came out and admitted look this thing is a mess, that by trying to be so exact on each farm we have lost sight of the big picture, shut the programs down, let's just go to guaranteeing everyone x amount of dollars, everyone is equal and develop it further for the future.