Risk management program popular with Ontario's fruit and vegetable growers

Wednesday, February 29, 2012

By SUSAN MANN

Preliminary numbers for the horticultural sector’s self directed risk management program show that so far 71 per cent of the allowable net sales have been signed up.

Mark Wales, chair of the safety net section for the Ontario Fruit and Vegetable Growers Association, says the final numbers will be higher. The numbers presented at the association’s February board meeting were up to the end of December. Growers had until Feb. 1 to apply for the 2011 program.

Wales, who is also president of the Ontario Federation of Agriculture, says they expect the final numbers to show that 80 to 85 per cent of producers and more than 90 per cent of actual production will be signed up for the program, implemented last year by the Ontario agriculture ministry along with the business risk management programs for grains and oilseeds, beef, pork, veal and sheep.

The preliminary sign up number is good, he says. Fruit and vegetable growers like the program, which is similar to previous self directed risk management programs in place from the mid-1990s to 2007. “It’s a very well understood program in horticulture,” he says.

For this year’s program, the application information will go out in the summer. BF