INNISFAIL – So far it has been a welcoming and promising year at The Jungle Farm - a far better one than the heartbreaking devastation seen in 2022.
Last summer the Innisfail-area market garden producer was battered by hail storms.
“My dad’s cousin is 94 or so and he was telling me that it was the worst storm he’d ever seen,” said Leona Staples, co-owner of The Jungle Farm.
The big one on Aug. 1 of last year was especially devastating as it caused property damage along with the businesses’ famed strawberries and other crops.
“We lost a lot of the plants in the strawberries from the hail. The large hailstones actually killed plants,” said Staples. “We hoped it just damaged the plants and they would be fine to come back this year. That’s not what we are finding now that they are growing.”
Following the devastation Staples began lobbying the Alberta government for crop insurance improvements for market garden producers who have historically been left out of meaningful insurance coverage to cover large-scale losses caused by natural disasters, such as hail storms.
She was heard and now there is hope.
The Jungle Farm has received an improved hail insurance rider from the Agriculture Financial Services Corporation (AFSC), a provincial government Crown corporation. However, they still have to pay for administration costs.
However, Blaine Staples, Leona’s husband and business partner, and other growers met with AFSC officials on July 10 and were told they were “number one” on the Crown corporation’s priority list.
In fact, AFSC wants to develop an all-risk insurance program just for them.
This gives Blaine and all other market garden producers hope.
“I'm very confident something will develop over the next few years and it'll be a real boon to the industry going forward because there’s a lot of capital costs involved with market gardening. It's really intensively expensive,” said Blaine, adding he expects it will be three to five years before a finished AFSC product is ready for market garden producers.
“For the industry to grow we need this risk mitigation so that people can go forward and not have to be really conservative about making sure they've got enough money in the bank to cover a couple of years of hail storms.”
Jesse Cole, AFSC’s manager of insurance products and product innovation, confirmed to the Albertan that his Crown corporation is now working on a new cost-shared program; a multi-peril insurance product for market garden producers.
“We are not sure yet how that is going to look,” said Cole. “Typically, with insurance products, like for canola and wheat, and barley, they include multiple perils, like hail and drought and frost and flooding.
“What we want to do for the market gardens, as they are they're quite a bit different than a typical farm in Alberta, is to make sure we've got their needs down correctly.”
He said his office has been meeting with market garden producers to figure out the right approach for the new program, with a goal of creating a cost shared insurance product in the long run.
Cole noted that with any kind of cost sharing product, such as multi-peril crop insurance, all administration costs are paid for by the federal and provincial governments.
“And then typically speaking, roughly 60 per cent of the premiums as well,” said Cole, adding it’s hoped a future multi-peril program for market garden producers would be designed the same way. “What we need to do there is work with the federal government because it's such a large source of the funding.
“We’ve already had some good conversations and talked about it, so they know what we're doing. We'll have to go through the process with them to get that approved. That's the goal for sure."
In the meantime, Blaine Staples says it’s important for everyone in the market garden industry to “keep the momentum going” and stay in contact with AFSC to ensure there’s progress with the proposed multi-peril insurance plan.
“It’s really a challenge to keep the momentum going forward,” said Blaine. “But then when the clouds build up on Friday night and the thunder and lightning starts flashing, and you hear about the neighbour getting hail, it then becomes a much bigger issue.
“It’s really important that everybody in the industry keeps this in mind that they stay in touch with AFSC and keep the momentum going. And keep in touch with their local MLA and let them know this is an issue.”
