For Immediate Release
Canadian Agricultural Partnership Agreement Reached The Saskatchewan Association of Rural Municipalities (SARM) is pleased that an agreement has been made between the federal government and the provinces on a replacement for Growing Forward 2 (GF2). The Canadian Agricultural Partnership (CAP) is a five-year $388 million funding agreement that will take effect on April 1, 2018. “It is reassuring to know the next agricultural policy framework will continue seamlessly after GF2 expires” said SARM President Ray Orb. CAP maintains the same funding as GF2 and faces the challenge of making improvements without additional funds. SARM has been lobbying for AgriStability to return to Growing Forward 1 levels of 80 per cent reference margin coverage. Disappointingly, this did not come to fruition but two changes have been made. First, provinces and territories will have the option of triggering late participation in AgriStability which would allow producers to enter the program after the registration deadline has passed; payments would be reduced by 20 per cent. The Saskatchewan Ministry of Agriculture has firmly indicated that it will not implement this option and SARM agrees with this as it goes against the objective of being proactive. Secondly, AgriStability will ensure that producers never receive less than 70 per cent of reference margins. These changes to the reference margin limiting are encouraging as it will provide better compensation to producers. To the satisfaction of SARM, AgriRecovery will remain the same. This framework provides disaster relief for producers in extraordinary circumstances such as flooding or drought. Other notable changes are that AgriInvest’s matching contributions will be reduced to $10,000 per producer from $15,000. AgriInvest is a savings account-based program where deposits are matched by government. This program is popular with producers and SARM is disappointed with this change as SARM has been advocating for an increase to the matching contribution. “Overall, it remains to be seen how program changes will affect producers and we need to reserve judgements until we can see them in action. But we are glad to see that AgriRecovery remains unchanged” said SARM President Ray Orb. For more information please contact: Jay MeyerExecutive Director(306) 761-3721
