CCGA Now Issuing Cash Advances at Higher Limit

Sep 24, 2025

The Canadian Canola Growers Association (CCGA) is now issuing cash advances under the Advance Payments Program at the higher limits announced by the federal government earlier this month.

Amendments to the Agricultural Marketing Programs Regulations came into effect last week, providing for a temporary doubling of the interest-free portion for canola advances under the Advance Payments Program (APP). The CCGA, which administers the APP in Western Canada, began issuing cash advances at the new limits on Friday.

The implementation of these changes means that for the 2025 and 2026 program years, farmers now have access to up to $500,000 interest-free and a maximum eligible advance of $1 million. For 2025, the interest-free component includes up to $250,000 for any commodity eligible under the program, plus an additional $250,000 for canola only.

“With the increased interest-free limit for canola being in place as of Sept.16, CCGA will reassess all current 2025 customer advances and reallocate the interest-free and interest-bearing portions of those advances in a way that maximizes the interest-free benefit available to eligible farmers,” said Dave Gallant, CCGA’s Vice-President, Finance & APP Operations.

For 2025, farmers can apply for up to $1 million in financing, with up to $500,000 interest-free, and the remainder at CCGA’s interest-bearing rate of prime less 0.25%. First-time applicants are encouraged to apply through CCGA’s contact center, while returning customers can access self-serve options through their online accounts.

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Video: Western Canadian Agriculture: Hard Times Made the World's Best Farmers

Western Canadian agriculture produced the most advanced farmers in the world not through abundance but through adversity. The crow rate fell. The wheat price went nowhere. The brown envelopes stopped.

When the subsidies disappeared, the bad farmers left and the good ones stayed. And the ones who stayed could not just grow wheat anymore. They started growing lentils and canola and peas and flax and faba beans. They built crop rotation. They got serious about agronomy because there was no government backstop. That process produced the Western Canadian agriculture Dennis Bulani describes in this clip: the most advanced, most educated farming culture in the world.

His contrast with Iowa corn and soybean farmers is sharp. At a DeKalb farmer meeting in Okoboji, Iowa, he asked what crop rotation they ran. Beans on corn stubble, corn on bean stubble. How do you fertilize? The co-op agronomist handles it. Have you considered other crops? No need. We make so much money on corn and soybeans. Western Canadian agriculture was never allowed that comfort. And now those Iowa farmers are watching soybean markets lock up with China and corn prices slide, and they do not have the agronomy knowledge or the research base to pivot. Western Canadian farmers adapted on a dime because they had done it before.

Dennis also makes the case that Western Canadian agriculture keeps adapting in real time. Low commodity prices over the past year have pushed growers to look seriously at precision spot-spray technology. He knows a neighbor who bought a sprayer with the seeing-eye system and sprayed only 80 out of 320 acres. As a chemical retailer Dennis acknowledges that will affect his sales. He supports it anyway, because if it advances Canadian agriculture and makes farmers money, that is a good outcome.

The lesson Dennis draws from the tale of two farms: continuous improvement is the only durable strategy. When canola was $22 a bushel some growers went to Arizona instead of the Crop Production Show. When the price came down those same growers came back to the research and the discipline. Products do not go on Rack Petroleum's shelves unless they pass a replicated trial first. That is what Western Canadian agriculture built through hard times: farmers who do the work whether the times demand it or not.

Dennis Bulani is CEO of Rack Petroleum and Ultimate Yield in Biggar, Saskatchewan. Dan Aberhart hosts GTF Productions, Western Canadian Agriculture's foremost live briefing platform and its foremost AI training platform for ag operators