About the evaluation
The Office of Audit and Evaluation of Agriculture and Agri-Food Canada undertook an evaluation of AgriStability to assess program relevance, design, delivery, efficiency and effectiveness.
The evaluation assessed AgriStability from 2016–2017 to 2020–2021 using multiple lines of evidence: a review of program documents, files, and literature; interviews with internal and external stakeholders; and analysis of secondary and administrative data.
AgriStability summary
- Managed by the Business Risk Management Programs Directorate and administered by the Farm Income Programs Directorate and provincial partners.
- Intended to mitigate small income declines, and make investments to manage risk and improve market outcomes.
- Over $1.1 billion in federal expenditures from 2016–2017 to 2020–2021.
What we found
Relevance
- AgriStability provides access to individualized whole-farm protection from large margin declines, and helped protect producers’ margins.
Design and delivery
- Program complexity continues to be a major barrier to participation for producers, in particular smaller producers, who often need to source accounting expertise to assist with Program applications.
- Federal and provincial administrators have implemented changes to AgriStability to better support producers. However, more needs to be done to address issues of timeliness and predictability of payments.
Efficiency
AgriStability is expensive to administer due to its tailored (individualized) and complex nature.
Effectiveness
- There are barriers to participation for underrepresented populations such as young farmers, women, Indigenous Peoples and persons with disabilities.
- Program payments are not always timely as over 40% arrived 8 months after the end of the program year.
- Producers view interim payments as being unpredictable, and as a consequence are rarely used (1% of program payments are interim payments).
Recommendations
Recommendation 1: The Assistant Deputy Minister, Programs Branch, in consultation with provincial administrators, should identify ways to simplify AgriStability to reduce producer administrative burden.
Recommendation 2: The Assistant Deputy Minister, Programs Branch, in consultation with provincial administrators, should find ways to make interim and final payments more predictable and to improve the timeliness of final payments.
Recommendation 3: The Assistant Deputy Minister, Programs Branch, in consultation with provincial administrators, should develop and implement a means to increase access to AgriStability by underrepresented populations.
Management response
Management agrees with the evaluation recommendations, and has outlined an action plan to address them by April 1, 2024.