With the winter freeze arriving earlier this year, oyster growers on Prince Edward Island (PEI) are finding it difficult to keep up with their private crop insurance premiums. Instead, they are calling for access to PEI’s government crop insurance program, as reported by CBC News.
Shawn Cooke, president of the Island Oyster Growers Group, told CBC that private insurance premiums are too costly for the island’s oyster growers.
“As the farms grow and more fellas are getting into it, everyone’s got more invested into it,” said Cooke.
“And it’s very intensive, because you’ve got two or three years invested in a crop, so the opportunity for a loss is higher.”
With the PEI government paying out $11 million in crop insurance claims this year, there’s certainly good reason why oyster growers want to join. The problem is that government crop insurance is only offered to farmers – meaning oyster growers and others in PEI’s shellfish industry are excluded.
“As an association, we’ve asked government before if they’d be interested in including us in a program like crop insurance, thinking the oyster industry is a lot like the farming industry,” said Cooke. “But we’ve never had any success.”
Government crop insurance programs are administered by each province, but Agriculture Canada sets the rules. While premiums for government crop insurance tend to be lower, coverage is limited based on historic margins. This leaves the door open for flexible private crop insurance providers.
