Manitoba Beef Producers (MBP) is welcoming news that the federal, provincial and territorial (FPT) governments have agreed to remove the Reference Margin Limit (RML) from Agri-Stability and that this change is retroactive to the 2020 production year.
General manager, Carson Callum, says the RML was a particularly concerning area that made the program quite inequitable, particularly for cow-calf producers because of their on-farm cost structure.
"So they have a lot less allowable expenses and it discounted them and didn't accurately portray what their reference margin would be on a given year," he explained. "But now moving forward with this removal, it'll be more based on an olympic average. So, if folks have a margin decline they won't have to have such a drastic decline as it was in the previous program to get to see benefit."
“For some time MBP and its national and provincial beef industry counterparts have been strongly advocating for changes to business risk management (BRM) programs, including the removal of the RML,” said MBP President Tyler Fulton. “MBP believes the removal of the RML should help to increase the predictability and bankability of the AgriStability program and ultimately make it more equitable, particularly for cow-calf producers, but also others in the sector.”
In addition, MBP is asking that governments to continue their dialogue in conjunction with the agricultural commodities, particularly regarding the proposed increase to the compensation rate from 70 per cent to 80 per cent.
"It's unfortunate that there wasn't movement from the FPT meeting on that piece because we feel that is important as well," added Callum.
With the deadline to enrol in AgriStability now extended to June 30, MBP encourages Manitoba’s beef producers to evaluate this business risk management option to best determine how it fits into their operations in terms of mitigating against risk.
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