By Bruce Cochrane.
The Chair of the Saskatchewan Pork Development Board says recent better economic times in Canada's pork industry have helped improve the ability of Canada's business risk management programs to protect pork producers from sudden unexpected downturns in profitability.
Canada's federal, provincial and territorial, agriculture ministers agreed to the key elements of a new agricultural policy framework, the Canadian Agricultural Partnership, including updates to business risk management programming, last month.
The three billion dollar program, will come into effect on April 1.
Florian Possberg, the Chair of the Saskatchewan Pork Development Board, says the new partnership provides farmers the confidence that these programs will be funded for the next five years.
Florian Possberg-Saskatchewan Pork Development Board:
As the pork industry we went through some tough times between 2008 and 2014 which meant our margins that we were guaranteed through AgriStability were nonexistent because we didn't have profitability.
Since then through we have had better years.
The 70 percent margin provided by AgriStability means that many producers now have coverage if we have a market collapse.
The AgriInvest, the savings program was maxed out 15 thousand dollars matching contribution from producers and government, that's been reduced to 10 thousand so that will have some impact on many of our producers.
Significant changes, other than the reduction in investment in AgriInvest, it pretty much provides us with the same security we had going forward.
Only, as I said, we've had some better times so most producers have positive margins to fall back on.
Possberg says negotiations have been underway for many years and having a commitment that the program will be in place for next spring, provides farmers the stability of knowing what to expect so they can move forward with confidence.
Source: Farmscape