AFSC has taken its business to higher heights, about 120 metres to be exact. The insurance provider has just wrapped the second year of a drone imagery test program to better assess animal damage in crops and provide a more accurate picture of what happens in the middle of a field.
It came without warning. Prairie farmers were dealt the environmental version of poker’s 7-2 off-suit: drought conditions not seen in 20-plus years and a heat dome, which may become agriculture’s word of the year for all the wrong reasons.
In September, as the economic fallout from the 2021 drought continued to hit home on Alberta farms, Pine Lake cattle farmer Kelly Smith-Fraser stepped into the role of Agriculture Financial Services Corporation (AFSC) board chair. It has not been an easy time to lead the group: insurance needs are high across the ag sector and AFSC has been tasked with administering the $340 million joint federal–provincial AgriRecovery program through the Canada-Alberta Livestock Feed Assistance Initiative.
Weather patterns over the last decade have been reliably unreliable at best. And while insurance does provide some reprieve when fall crops remain in the field until spring, farmers are contemplating management decisions they hope will diminish the risk.
Following a generally cool, sometimes too wet, sometimes too dry growing season, an unhappy portion of Alberta’s 2019 grain crop was snowed under and overwintered in the field.
As part of its 2020/21 budget, the Alberta government announced a budget cut of $5.3 million to the Agriculture Financial Services Corporation (AFSC). However, the Crown corporation’s chief financial and innovation officer said farmers and agribusiness owners who rely on AFSC for loans, crop insurance and disaster assistance shouldn’t panic. The organization’s staff plan to sharpen their pencils to cut administration costs, rather than customer service.
