Running an agricultural business comes with a lot of uncertainty. Risks such as unexpected disease outbreaks, market volatility, and weather variations can all impact success rates year over year, with devastating outcomes if not mitigated and planned for properly. This is why there are several government business risk management programs available to agricultural enterprises across the country. And while these programs are known to provide a benefit to producers, there are a few unknowns worth looking into.
“In Canada, there’s a big gap between business risk management programs for crop producers, such as grain and oilseed farms, and cow-calf producers,” said University of Saskatchewan (USask) Agricultural Economics PhD student Rebecca Zanello, who received a national scholarship from the Social Sciences and Humanities Research Council (SSHRC) to support her research.
It’s not that the cow-calf producers aren’t relying on the programs that are available—many of them operate mixed farms and manage cropland alongside their herds. As a result, the ability to access business-risk-management programs for crop production offers a benefit to the entire enterprise.
“A lot of respondents indicated that having cattle as part of their operation is very important to them, which makes sense. The cattle industry can be very hard work, so you’re not necessarily going to do it if you don’t think it’s important somehow,” said Zanello. “But what I would like to figure out is how can we boost the resilience of the cow-calf part of their business?”
It’s this line of inquiry that has led Zanello to launch a dissertation that focuses on how cowcalf producers make business decisions and what values, such as community involvement or financial stability, they maintain when thinking about risk and risk management.
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