Announcement for Flooded Prairie Farmland

Rarely do governments act so quickly and decisively. I was amazed when the meeting of federal and provincial agriculture ministers resulted in a program announcement for flooded Prairie farmland. Usually the closing news conference to these meetings is short on tangible action and long on bafflegab. There is no perfect program to deal with the widespread flooding problems, but the announced program strikes a good balance. The $30 an acre in compensation applies to both unseeded land as well as cropland that’s been flooded and that’s a healthy approach. It will be relatively easy to calculate and money will be able to flow quickly. The extra assistance is significant, particularly when added to the Unseeded Acreage Payments and Establishment Benefits available through crop insurance. There will always be some who say the assistance should have been greater. That’s the stance being taken by NDP Leader Dwain Lingenfelter, but past NDP governments were reluctant to cost share even the existing farm safety nets and their response to disasters was to beat up on Ottawa for not fixing the problem. The federal / provincial AgriRecovery response to the drought that affected the livestock sector was late and it picked winners and losers. This AgriRecovery response is timely and relatively well designed. I’m Kevin Hursh.