Western Canadian Wheat Growers Disappointed In Federal Government's Lack Of Action

Dec 20, 2019

The Western Canadian Wheat Growers are disappointed in the lack of action coming out of this week's Federal, Provincial and Territorial Agriculture Ministers Meeting.

A release from the Wheat Growers says this week’s communiqué from the Ag Ministers meeting shows a federal government that is completely out of touch with grain farmers and the challenges that they are facing.

President Günter Jochum says for years farm groups have been calling for a fix to AgriStability.

He notes he’s pleased to see the change with private insurance but says more needs to be done; the ministers talk about tweaking AgriStability but that’s just not going to cut it.

"Having another report from government bureaucrats and testing pilot programs in select jurisdictions is a lump of coal in every grain farmers' Christmas stocking.”

Jochum says AgriStability would come in really handy for a number of producers this year with many struggling due to the challenging harvest, a rail strike, international trade issues, carbon tax and more.

“In the short term, it would be a really quick fix to take the margins from 70% to 85%. I mean, it had been there in the past, it's about $300 million extra that would cost this year. And this year, we had a really tough year, where there would be lots of money flowing to farmers.”

In a release, the Western Canadian Wheat Growers says when it comes to making changes to AgriStability doing another government report and testing pilot programs in select jurisdictions is a lump of coal in every grain farmer's Christmas stocking.

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