Poll

[farmaholic]

AgriStability:

Who here has allowable expenses higher
than their reference margin? If you
have for any length of time, exit the
industry(as if you had a choice).

Kiss your healthy reference margins
goodbye, they are useless. Your current
year reference margin will have to fall
below 70% of your ALLOWABLE EXPENSES,
not total expenses, before you trigger a
payment. Look at your Calculation of
Benefits statement to see what your
allowable expenses have been over the
last 5 years and take 70% of that, grim
coverage.

Who the **** was representing us?
Wasn't the final ratification meeting in
Whitehorse, Yukon, the farming capital
of Canada? We got hoodwinked.

My ultimate goal was hoping I never
would have needed it but now I know I
won't have any meaningful support from
this program.

[agchat]

Know were you are coming from farmaholic. But
you see, it goes like this. Take away cwb, make
buddy, buddy with lots of farmers. Now axe the
shit out of everything else, who the hell cares.
Harper, Ritz not stupid, they know farmers ain't
a voting for NDP or Liberal anyway, we got rid of
what alot of farmers wanted so we have it
made.Its now time to concentrate on that east
voting, cause we got them western boys happy,
happy, happy. End of story.

[FarmRanger]

....or could it possible be that a disaster assistance program should only kick in when there is a disaster.

[ALLFARMER]

You bet

I received some very nice cheques in the past but
no longer participate.

I have read farmer participation has dropped
significantly.

You'd get a better bang from your participation
fee's by putting that money into lottery tickets.

[farmaholic]

Farmranger. mathematically the old program only
really covered 35% of first full 30%margin decline
because the first 15% wasn't covered. Better
coverage occurred in tier three , 80%.

AgRecovery was for real disasters, AgInvest and
AgStability were for income stabilization in my
opinion

This program never was a cash cow to us but I did
like the protection it offered, now it's useless.

[mbratrud]

farmaholic you are just looking at this now? They made these announcements months ago. You have had time to review Crop Insurance Coverage vs. Private Margin Insurance.

I do think they went a little far but I understand why they changed it. It was way to expensive if there was a major price pull back.

The one bright spot to me is it was way too easy for farms to expand with 85 percent of the old reference Margin Formula. If I had good reference Margins it was very little risk to double my farm size, which has been a significant contributor to the crazy land rents we are seeing today.

Farms are very much going to have to stand on their own merit and to me that is a good thing.

I have done a lot of homework on this, Insurance like Global Ag Risk and Crop Insurance are adequate replacements but they do cost more. Every farm depending on their particular situation will find that one or the other fits for them.

In our case we went with 80% Crop Insurance because of how the math worked out with our Crop Basket this year (we grow 8 different crops). Had we had a different line up of Crops (2 or 3) GARS may have looked better. Some of our Neighbors went GARS for other reasons.

Crop Insurance deadline has already passed but I think GARS goes to the end of April so if you are feeling under insured you should give them a call.

Unfortunately all too often this happens that guys don’t look at this stuff seriously until they are worried about a claim. Some of us were trying to engage guys to have this debate 5 months ago when these announcements were made.

[farmaholic]

mbratrud: with all due respect, if you could find
them, I've made posts in the past regarding this
very issue. The word I used was gutted.
I did a crop insurance analysis for our farm,
getting in on the ground floor is expensive with
poor coverage. Because of this we decided never
to participate. We farmed and grew our farm
without it so I am sure we will be fine.
My intent was to make people aware of how bad
their margin will have to drop before there is any
support

[farmaholic]

mbratrud: I don't claim to be a guru of
this program, but doesn't the structural
change component of it prevent payouts by
simply increasing the farm size? If you
know otherwise please explain.

[bgmb]

This is the most un conservative move the
conservatives could make with respect to support
programs for farmers. They cut the reference
margins of the growers who had the best history
and who have probably taken the least money out
of the program over the years the most.

If they wanted to cut why not cut agri invest which
makes no sense, just paying a farmer cash no
strings attached every year no matter what.

Another alternative would have been to raise the
premiums on agristability that would have made
more sense vs. singling out the ones with high
margins and taking a shot at them.

What it amounts to is now good farmers will have
the same margin as shitty ones.

[mbratrud]

farmaholic, the structural change made it very easy for expansion, maybe not perfect but enough to embolden many expansion plans.

bgmb, I absolutely agree with you. Why didn't they leave the program as it was but charge a premium more reflective of the Private Market. If they would have looked at something like $5 for 65% Coverage, $10 for 75% and $15 for 85% using the old math they would have had a program that made money and provided stabilty.

I did hear that when they were running scenerios of $9 Canola with the old program it was very unsettling the Billions of dollars in cost.

Regardless it is what it is, time to move on and not worry about a government safety net but rather the tools that are available in the Market place.

To me this was a very fiscally Conservative move. Wish they were actually this conservative in many other sectors.

[freewheat]

I am another guy glad they gutted it. We
need some reality in the industry. And
yes, if you expand, your reference
margin is immediately adjusted higher,
proportionate to the expansion, so you
are covered for much higher margins, and
can therefore go out and rent land just
cuz you can...

Crop insurance has finally become a good
program. Agri-invest is kinda neat,
though it was better when it was 3% of
sales.

The guys who like Crop insurance are the
ones who have stuck with it. I probably
wouldn't like it either without the 50%
experience discount, and having to use
the deplorable area average yields.

My advice for guys who want some kind of
coverage, would be to get in crop
insurance, it is the one plan that
probably won't be gutted. As time goes
on and you prove yourself, your coverage
increases, and your premiums go down.

I took 50% coverage for years. It was a
cheap way to be kind of covered, and
build my own yield history vs the
pathetic area averages. Now my coverage
is pretty darn good, and quite cheap
too.

I am a free market guy all the way. A
person should run their farm based on
what THEY THEMSELVES can produce, not on
ad hoc programs that never seem to work
consistently.

Some of the guys with the biggest
payouts, are the same guys who buy new
iron all the dang time, rent land for no
other reason but to say they are the
biggest, and whine and complain that a
program gets stripped down.

We need to do it on our own, guys.
Really. We have been through some nasty
years as I have said before. What one
does then, is make do. You don't buy
iron, you buckle down in household
items. The new 60 inch tv can wait for
better times.

Personal responsibilty. No one should be
guaranteed by government, a guaranteed
support for business decisions that are
iffy. I survived the tough years by
being frugal, not by government payouts.
If you can't be frugal, but need a new
half ton every other year, GET A GRIP
ALREADY! If you just have to have an
S690 combine or whatever the heck they
are, why should you get a handout when
you could use a 10 year old machine
instead?

Society is a shambles, people are
spoiled like never before. It really is
unbelievable to me.

[RidgeRunner]

mbratrub hit the nail on the head. I think the gov't was looking at two things....what this would potentially cost them in a crop/price failure, and how do we slow down the increase in farm debt. Might(will)get lambasted for saying this but with 85% income protection, risk tolerence goes up, opening the door for these unrealistic land rents and sales. I know in my situation, I have been blessed with some good years, and had a mother of a margin built up. Is it right that Jane and John taxpayer are on the hook to subsidize my farm after one bad year? Actually the gov't should have went one step further and eliminated it, as in it's form now, is more or less useless. I think anyone with a calculator can figure out that 80-120 ac rent, or 3000/ac land does not pencil with normal yields and normal prices. Agristability in my opinion was a no-lose situation that was partly to blame for this ag bubble that has been created. That and our financial lenders, which have been like rope salesmen in a prison. Obviously not everyone fits this example so forgive me if I offended anyone. I think a well funded crop insurance program should be the extent of gov't support.
As my dad always said, "if you want to bet big, you should be able to lose big.." and I think agristabilty to a degree did not allow that.

Remember...this is IMO.

[SASKFARMER3]

Keep some grain over and a good crop insurance
program and keep the agri invest. The other
program was good for shit!

[ajl]

I agree with Freewheat and Ridge and am glad to see Agristability gutted.
I would have eliminated entirely myself but what would the bureaucrats
do?

[freewheat]

So sick of my two words per line. How does
one fix it? Or is it only for a select
few? lol