By Patrick Book

Crop insurance claims way up in Saskatchewan

Jul 20, 2011 | 5:54 PM

According to numbers provided by the Saskatchewan government, more than 13,000 crop insurance claims have been filed for unseeded acres this year.

That's nearly 1,000 more than last year. The previous ten years combined saw just over 18,000 claims filed.

Sean Jaques, executive manager of field operations for Saskatchewan Crop Insurance Corporation, says only 5,104 of those claims have been paid out so far.

Claim processing was delayed earlier this summer because of a labour dispute involving unionized SCIC employees, but Jaques insists they're working as hard as possible now.

“We've moved people around in the province to help in areas with higher claim numbers,” Jaques explained in an interview Tuesday. “We have also taken some of the claims in the hardest hit areas and we're doing some follow-up after.”

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So far more than $155 million has been paid out. Jaques won’t predict whether or not the dollar amount will meet or exceed last year's elevated amount of more than $215 million.

“We've only processed about 5,100 claims and every claim can be somewhat different on the amount of unseeded acres. To draw that comparison we almost have to wait until they're all completed and then we can compare previous years,” said Jaques.

Last year the province said the total for the 10 previous years was about $145 million dollars