Ontario’s Agricorp has begun mailing cheques from the province’s $130 million aid program for cattle, hog and horticulture producers, the agency announced Tuesday.
Cheques went into the mail starting Feb. 29 and should begin to arrive in producers’ mailboxes this week, the agency said. Agricorp is the provincial agency that delivers risk management funding and programming to Ontario farmers.
The payments to livestock producers, worth $100 million, will be based on 12 per cent of their historic allowable net sales, while the $30 million horticulture program will make payments based on two per cent of allowable net sales. The maximum payment per farmer is $3 million.
Producers must have at least half their total commodity sales from cattle, hogs or horticulture to be eligible.
The Ontario cattle, hog and horticulture payment (OCHHP) was announced Dec. 14 as a provincial response to what Ag Minister Leona Dombrowsky described as “near-record low prices and tight market conditions.”
