My name is Scott Shiels. I am the grain procurement manager at Grain Millers Canada, the largest organic oat miller in the world and the largest oat processor in North America. I also serve on the board of COTA.
What we are seeing on the ground is quite straightforward. We are losing organic producers and acres, and that is translating directly into lost Canadian opportunity. Across the prairies, farms are exiting organic production. Farmers who have been organic for 20-plus years are walking away. Some are retiring without an organic buyer for their land; others are being forced back into conventional production, and many of those are heartbroken doing it.
If we lose a reliable Canadian supply, we need to replace it, often through imports, and that creates instability all the way through, from farmers to processors, manufacturers, retailers and, ultimately, consumers. That weakens our food system and erodes one of the most respected organic sectors in the world.
A big part of the issue is how risk is defined. Risk today is not about just yield. It's climate, input costs and market pressures. Organic producers manage risk differently. They rely on longer rotations, soil health and diversity instead of chemical inputs. That makes them resilient, but it also makes them look riskier on paper, especially in programs built for conventional systems that have more uniform yield and predictability.
We're also seeing convergence. Conventional producers are increasingly adopting cover crops and more diverse rotations to manage risk. The system is evolving, but BRM programs are not evolving with it.
AgriStability does not reflect organic realities like longer rotations and transition periods, which can lower reference margins and penalize producers. Organic farms face wider yield swings, sometimes in the 80-bushel-per-acre range versus 20 in conventional systems. Longer rotations also mean less consistent data. As a result, reference margins can be artificially depressed, especially during three risky transition years. Producers are effectively penalized for adopting more resilient systems.
AgriRecovery does not fully address the types of disasters organic farmers face. Pesticide drift from a neighbouring farm can jeopardize an organic producer's certification, and while compensation may cover immediate crop loss, it often overlooks cascading impacts: lost contracts, markets, premiums and losing your place in the supply chain entirely. From our experience, that has immediate consequences. If a contracted organic crop isn't delivered, we still have the commitments. We either find replacement supply, often at a higher cost, or we fall short. That disruption carries all the way through to the manufacturers, retailers and, ultimately, consumers who can no longer find Canadian products on the shelf. At that point, it becomes very difficult to rebuild those markets.
Organic producers often cannot get insurance that reflects the actual value of their crops. Pricing benchmarks are inconsistent and often disconnected from real contracts. We've seen cases in which a farmer was offered six dollars a bushel for insurance while their actual contract was nine.
Saskatchewan has the most organic acres in Canada and is one of the few provinces with a tailored insurance program for organic, which is arguably the best one. While this leadership is appreciated, only 29% of the one million acres cropped are insured, compared to 82.5% of the 40 million conventional acres. The lack of consistency and coverage discourages organic producers from taking advantage of the Saskatchewan Crop Insurance program. As a result, fewer acres are insured, supply becomes more volatile and planning becomes more difficult.
Our recommendation is to allow contract pricing to be recognized within insurance models alongside consistent market data.
Mostly, we do not need entirely new programs but targeted adjustments: an organic-specific crop insurance approach that reflects market prices, variability and contamination risk; improvements to AgriStability to better account for crop rotation and transition timelines; AgriRecovery updates to recognize certification loss as a multi-year risk; organic transition programs to support periods of increased risk; recognizing and investing further in science and research as core business risk management tools for proactive risk management; and better recognition of preventative risk management, such as diversification and soil health—not just reactive support—for a truly resilient sector.
These priorities align with the sector's organic action plan, which focuses on expanding domestic production to meet growing demand.
We welcome your questions.