Current programs don't reflect reality of today's farms, MNP says.Ottawa—Two simples changes to AgriStability would go a long way in supporting Canadian farmers through the pandemic and into the future, says the accounting firm MNP.The changes would “ensure AgriStability meets its stated goals of equitability across all sectors and to make the program simpler and more predictable, bankable, transparent, responsive, timely and decision and market-neutral,” Stuart Person, the firm's senior Vice-President, Agriculture, told the Commons agriculture committee.His proposals were a follow up to an extensive series of recommendations MNP proposed to the committee in April for making the federal-provincial Business Risk Management (BRM) programs more useful to farmers.Person said it was encouraging to see “a broad discussion happening across the country related to BRM programs with diverse opinions as to the right way forward. This discussion is crucial as we work to improve BRM programs to safeguard both our food supply and the economic contribution of Canadian agriculture.”The two proposed changes focus on issues of fairness and equitability in the program, he said. One would see the temporary removal of the $3-million cap on payments and consider if a cap is even necessary moving forward.“Farm sizes have grown tremendously since the inception of AgriStability and in our experience, a $3 million-cap is not reflective of the reality facing contemporary agriculture operations and unjustly exposes those operations to additional risk based on an arbitrary threshold.“While unfair to any large producer, the cap is a particular problem for certain grain operations, nurseries and feedlots. While the government may feel that a cap is warranted to address the total cost associated with the program, our preference would be that the program is applied equitably and fairly, regardless of whether someone farms 4,000 acres or 40,000 acres. That risk per acre is the same.”Steve Funk, MNP's national leader for farm income programs, said the other recommendation is to remove the BRM reference margin limit.The AgriStability concept dates back to the late 1990s with simplicity, predictability, bankability, transparency, responsiveness, timeliness, and decision and market neutrality as key components.“Since 2013 and the beginning of Growing Forward 2, however, the inclusion of the reference margin limit, or RML, within program parameters has been counter to these principles and the program has never been more complex,” he said.“RML applies to individual producers and/or sectors where AgriStability allowable expenses are low in relation to AgriStability allowable income. In theory, it's where producers have a low-cost structure. If the allowable expenses on average are less than 50 per cent of the allowable income, a producer will be limited and have an automatic and arbitrary reduction to their reference margin or support level under AgriStability.”The limit “has negatively impacted the effectiveness of AgriStability and the equitability of the program across many agricultural sectors, including cow-calf, organic crops, dairies, apiaries, bee pollinators, maple syrup producers, and cranberry producers, to name a few,” Funk said.Some producers would require a 51 per cent income drop before receiving any AgriStability benefit and many others would need at least a one-third decline.“These RML rules have resulted in a program that is less responsive and fundamentally unfair for many types of farms, even among farms in the same sector. A cap agreement effective for the 2018 program year put into effect a marginally positive change that increased, but did not restore, many limited reference margins.”Alex Binkley is a freelance journalist and writes for domestic and international publications about agriculture, food and transportation issues. He's also the author of two science fiction novels with more in the works.