Ag Ministers Seal Your Doom

[mbratrud]

This decision lacked farmer input and basically renders the program useless.

In my Opinion they should have:

- Scrapped Agri Invest make farmers save a little for themselves

- Maintained Agristabilty but put in fail safes to penalize multiple claims and abuse. The program was good but did promote abuse, made it too easy to expand, thus contributing to the run up in Land and Equipment costs.

Problems with what they have done.

The fine print is 70% of Margin or Allowable expenses which ever is less. Most Farms the Allowable expenses would only be about 40% of overall expenses whether you run a $400,000 combine or not. So do the math you are now buying Insurance for about 28% or less of your EXPENSES. You are required to buy 70% coverage in crop Insurance YOU WILL NEVER COLLECT FROM AGRISTABILTY and if you do your first call should be to RBAuction because ytou are screwed.

Changing with the wind is the problem with these programs. They have a couple high claim years and have a knee jerk reaction. If they would just put a program in place leave it for 20 years, penalize abuse is would eventually self fund!

They have just guaranteed more negative returns. Farmers will opt out of Agri Stability but use the Agri Invest (the retarded part of the program), and all it will do is cost taxpayers Money.

Dumb Dumb Dumb. If this is the Governments solution just get the hell out of the Insurance game and let the private industry in with the certainty that they don’t have to compete with government programs. All this tinkering from bureaucrats just skews the market.`

I really thought they were smarter than this.....

Ok Rant Done.

[mbratrud]

I more thing... LOL How much does the program take in premium wise and have they deducted from their 13 bil paid out?

[ado089]

With the shittiest land in SK. still
going for $900/ac I'm sure farmers are
doing fine. If you don't want to go
broke don't spend like you're going to
get 50bu/ac crops at $9 for wheat and
$14 for canola. If you can't make money
farming without the help of the
government step aside because there are
people out there that can. My biggest
barrier to success is finding land at
price that allows for some wiggle room
in tight years all other expenses can be
matched up to production potential and
cash flow is managed to buffer poor
years.

[wlc]

Grew up on regina plains .cream from 2 milk cows paid the power bill[power came in in 1952].Peddling eggs bot
the grocers .Always kept over 2 bins [12 x 14 ]of wheat just in case .I think lived quite well.

[freewheat]

wlc, trouble is, no one wants to work or
be tied down anymore. Heaven forbid you
have to forgo a winter trip to hawaii
and feed animals. Farmers nowadays just
want to ride around in new iron, or
better yet, hire someone else to ride
around for them. Farmers have never
been so lazy in the history of this
occupation. They call four corn plants
and seven potato hills a garden. When it
gets tough to swallow payments on 400
thousand dollar combines, they scream
that times are tough, government must
help. After they park their 60 000
dollar trucks outside the coffee shop,
they head to the mail box to see if they
get a payment. lol

Had a conversation with a fellow who is
a silver spoon farmer. I mentioned I was
just coming in from shutting the
chickens in. He looked at me blankly. He
did not have a clue what the heck I
meant... But had I talked of new iron he
would have jumped all over that
conversation in glee, and fits of
ecstaticism. Sadly, this is the way
farming is today. For someone like you
or I, it can make one feel like a
misfit. But what the heck, I love
farming, and I will not bend to be like
them. EVER.

[mbratrud]

Good Idea, guys lets milk some cows and raise a few chickens, pull the kids out of dance, Skating, Hockey. Tell them to go get a student loan if they want to go to University. When it comes to retirement forget it we will just work until we keel over milking the cow one day. Sounds wonderful.

[perfecho]

do believe the ultimate problem is that government’s mandate cheap food, and farmers want/deserve a standard of living comparable to their peers. There have been many policies and allowances of letting offshore products in when certain prices get too high domestically.
The powers to be would rather pay out subsidies than have the masses vote them out due to high food prices. Have been in different meetings with gov officials, and although not official, they do mention a low food cost policy.

[ASRG]

mbratrud: That seems to be the program for a lot of guys on here?
Not knocking the guys who want to go back to a simpler way of life, but some of these guys are over 80 years old and they are going to keep farming....no matter what....until they are dead!

[fjlip]

Father-in-law did just that, died baling straw.
He loved what he did for 80 years, wanted to go with his boots on.

[Choice2U]

I've always wondered what policies governments have that result in the "cheap" food policy that some people talk about. Could someone please elaborate on this as the policies I see are free trade and the inverse, protecting supply management which is as far from being a cheap food policy as you can get.