Poll

[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

[Burbert]

Why da ya think, I always end my comments
with, fharperenritz, eh??????? Stupid
Comedian framers duped agin, comedian gag
at its best, going backwards 2.......

[farmaholic]

With a structural change, doesn't everything just rise or
decrease incrementally, if you expanded by 25%, doesn't your
reference margin and trigger point? Maybe it was only the
"Shifty" that used it unscrupulously, I don't farm for program
payments. I agree that you would be covered for the extra
acres but your reference margin(per acre) would be
relative(same as before). If things were done by the book I
don't see the advantage of expanding farm size just for extra
coverage, your margin doesn't increase per acre, just total
margin. Am I missing something?

The old program was no screaming hell either. For easy
figuring say your reference margin was 100,000 and you had a
total wipeout, with the different tiers and percentages the
total payout would be about 66,500. Total coverage is 66.5%!
As I said in the beginning top two tier wipeout in essence is
only 35%.

You're right, time to move on. Thanks everyone who contributed
and there were some good points made... Good discussion.

Freewheat: enlarge your text box by dragging the bottom right
hand corner, (not sure about smartphones though).
Machinery(amortization) isn't an eligible expense so doesn't
have a direct bearing on agstability.

Thanks everyone....

[farmaholic]

There he is.....

[freewheat]

Farmaholic, machinery is not directly related as an ineligible expense,
but IMO, it is still related in the whole scheme of things. Guys with
great margins, and who therefore had a half decent guarantee, could buy
stuff they did not always NEED, because they had a tangible guarantee.
Those of us with poor margins due to weather, had no such cushion. It
was pure luck of the draw, not management, and this is what gets my
goat at times. I had two inches of fast rain in 2011, that my neighbor
half a mile away did not get. Guess who got finished seeding? lol! My
land was unseeded, his was, and his crops did well. Why should blind
luck enable some over others??? Farmers with a string of luck had
enviable margins, those with 4 years in 6 unseeded due to too wet, and
no grain to sell at high prices had crappy margins.

What I mean by the expanding farm issue, is that it made it risk free
for those with good margins. You could not really lose a thing, and so
expansion was untempered IMO, and we as farmers should take
responsibility for our actions, not taxpayers. Expanding not of
necessity, sometimes drives me crazy: but to have the taxpayer
subsidize this, is IMO absolutely nuts. But I admit, they had to do
something regarding reference margins for expanding farms. It was a
conundrum.

The longer I live, the more I want freedom.

Hope my text is proper now, never noticed that drag button before, how
dumb is that??? lol.

[charliep]

freewheat

The shorter lines seem to go out on tablets, cell phones and strangely enough, apple computers. Much easier to read the short lines on a cell phone versus the extended ones. Short lines used to bug me as well but actually a benefit.

[wilagro]

freewheat: If you really want to annoy just pull that corner way, way........out...then everyone has to adjust their side slider/elevator or what ever it is called. Then everyone will curse you because the window is too large.

[bgmb]

Freewheat, Its not about how new of equipment you drive its about how much money you make. Why do you have a beef with guys buying new machines it obviously makes sense for some to buy new.... somebody has to wear the paint off for you.

[freewheat]

bgmb, I have no beef with guys buying new
iron at all. I did not mean to come across
as such, I was trying to relate it to the
taxpayer funded sense of security
agristability gave some guys who had great
margins, and had a bankable guarantee that
was not of their own making. Do you see
more what I meant?

[bgmb]

Yeah I hear ya, Agristability was really no different than crop insurance except it protected you on a whole farm basis instead of crop by crop and it also protected you against both price and yield declines vs. crop insurance that only protects you on a yield wreck.

I agree with you on crop insurance it is a good program, better than nothing that's for sure. However the premuims are far far more than agristability.