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Do you hate the idea of filling out your AgriStability form?
Do you worry that you are not doing it correctly?
Is your accountant making more money on the program than you are?

MCPA Finance Chairman, Art Jonasson, and his wife Jackie have a cow-calf operation at Vogar. Normally they send all their AgriStability information to their accountant for filing. But after attending two of the workshops offered through MAFRI in mid-September, Art is considering filling out the forms himself. At the very least, he now has a better understanding of the terminology and how his information is interpreted on the form.

Q. Before we start talking about AgriStability, can you give us an update on the feed situation in the flooded areas?

“Fortunately the month of September was dry and due to the moisture and unseasonably cool temperatures all summer, the hay still standing in the fields is not as coarse as it usually is this time of year. Some producers were able to get a reasonable second cut of alfalfa. But that is all relative to the amount of rainfall an area received. The native hay meadows on the other hand are virtually a write off in many areas. In the northwest for example, in places like Crane River, producers there are really short of feed.

Further south, guys are still poking away at it. I know we got more haying done in September than we did in July. Most producers in the flooded areas say the hay they did harvest is of poorer quality and cost them twice the amount in labour and fuel to put up.

Some guys I’ve talked to have enough feed and have been able to take advantage of crop insurance write-offs and were able to bale down south. We appreciate the fact that grain farmers dropped their straw and allowed cattle producers from here to bale it.
This is a good year for producers to feed test for nutritional value the hay supplies they do have on hand, so they know what they are feeding - since many will be also feeding straw to their cows along with grain and minerals.

With early fall calf prices still below the break-even point for most ranchers, the added expense of having to buy feed is the last thing we need.”

Q. Have you been to most of the meetings with government on behalf of the MCPA?

“Yes, I have.”

Q. And are you satisfied with the results?

“Well, it isn’t the cash payment per cow that we asked for through AgriRecovery.
What they are telling us is that the feed shortage should trigger an AgriStability payment for affected producers. I attended two meetings in the Interlake sponsored by MAFRI that had specialists from Agri-Food Canada and AgriStability on hand. I wanted to find out exactly what they are recommending.”

Q. And what are they saying producers should do?

“Basically, they are saying that producers should be able to fill out the AgriStability forms themselves.”

Q. When the CAIS program was introduced, didn’t the government offer financial help to encourage producers to hire an accountant because it was so complicated?

“Yes, but now that the historical data has been input, they are saying producers can save themselves money and avoid costly errors.”

Q. What sort of errors do you mean?

“One of the most important things they said we need to do is double check our Calculation of Program Benefit (COPB) forms when the come back from AgriStability to make sure the numbers are right. We need to make sure that the mathematics and the numbers that have been put in match our records.

And that we have only 90 days to file an appeal if there is an error.”

Q. Did you learn anything specific to your own farm?

“Yes, I did. Some of the information that I thought wasn’t that important actually is. For instance, because we live along the lake, when the lake is low we can get more hay and cover more acres. In the years we can’t hay there, I wasn’t including those acres in our forage production basket. According to AgriStability, that production should still be included in our forage basket.

And if one year you mark down that you bought standing hay from a neighbour it doesn’t help you according to AgriStability. But if you rent the land and pay your neighbour $10 a bale as a rental rate, the acres become part of your forage basket. It has the affect of increasing your previous year’s margins. They are trying to even it out so you are comparing this program year equally against all previous years as if they all had the same number of acres.”

Q. This sounds to me like manipulating the program?

“I would say it’s figuring out what is important when filling out the form. We think of income and expenses being the most important part, but with AgriStability, determining your margin is more important, and to do that the key numbers for livestock producers are their cow numbers, cows that calved and their forage acres.
It’s more a case of understanding the concept of how the program is designed to work. They have been telling us all along that the program will work, and we’ve been telling them it doesn’t, and yet we’ve all heard of cattlemen that it does work for . . . .
I think they’ve realized that a lot of producers don’t understand the concept which is different from how we normally think. Now they are explaining that concept to us.”

Q. What are the common mistakes that producers are making?

“One mistake is not stating their production units properly and that affects the reference margin because it accrues.

Another common mistake is that guys aren’t recording their total number of cows that are supposed to give birth. They are just stating the number of cows that had live calves.

And we need to make sure that the units we use to measure are consistent. They recommend doing any conversions ourselves and recording our forage and feed quantities in metric tonnes before giving those numbers to the accountant.”

Q. Anything else that pertains to cattle producers?

“Many of us have been breaking our calves down into weight categories. They say this not necessary and that it gets too complicated. We can just record the average weight of our calves and it works out to within a few dollars anyway.

And they said that those who are having difficulty can go to them for help. They said that most cattle producers should have a margin of about $300 a cow. Any really low margins set off an alarm bell and they have found that something has been filled out wrong, like not reporting the production units properly.”

Q. Anything else you want to add?

“Well, this is my interpretation of what they said and I would recommend that everyone try to get out to one or two of these meetings.

I have to confess that it didn’t start to make sense until the second meeting, then about halfway through, it clicked and now I get it (or at least I think I do).

One point I’d like to stress is that the people at AgriStability are confident that this is going to work for producers in affected areas, and they increased the percentage of the interim advance allowed from 60 to 75%.

It is important if producers need to apply for the interim advance that they make a one-on-one appointment at their local GO Center with AgriStability staff. And as soon as possible the MCPA needs to know if these programs will or won’t work for producers. We need people to call and let us know.”

To find a workshop scheduled for your area, see the ad on page 6.