Personally, I do a four-year rotation. One reason is to avoid diseases that attack grains, particularly fusariosis. One year, I grow canola, another year, I grow soy beans and, between the two, I grow other grains. Like producers all across Canada, I try to follow the best cycle possible to minimize disease.
As for the way the current situation is affecting me, I will say that, normally, the level of canola in my silos is starting to get low, with almost no stock left. But it's surprising, but there is still some left at the moment and this creates a liquidity crisis. It started before last February or March. In fact, it is tied to the tariffs that the Chinese placed on American soy beans. The prices started to drop in May of last year. This drop affected soy beans, then canola. As a producer, I'm affected, given that canola covers 25% of the land that I farm and that soy beans cover another 25%. In both cases, the prices have dropped.
I will give you an example. Under the contracts that I signed for the 2018 crops, before these crises started, I was selling canola for between $500 and $507 a ton. Currently, I'm being offered between $430 and $440 a ton. For the same 2018 harvest, that is a drop of $60 to $70 per ton. For soy beans, the situation is less pronounced, but the amounts are similar.
As for the Agri-Invest Program, we're talking about 1% of the eligible net sales. Therefore, the lower our sales are, the less support we receive from Agri-Invest. We are using our reserves. This program does not really address the problem. We become eligible for the Agri-Stability Program when losses reach 30%. I believe that 30% of Canadian producers have used that program, which we sometimes call “Agri-Disaster”.