Manitoba Agricultural Services Corporation

MASC Insurance FAQs

 

What can I do with MASC Online Services?

MASC Online Services allows a registered producer to perform many common tasks via the Internet, including:

• complete their Harvested Production Report (HPR)
• apply for Hail Insurance
• calculate Crop Coverage Plus
• view their Confirmation of Insurance
• view their Crop Management History
• view their Statement of Insurance
• view their Statement of Account
• view the status of a claim
• view AgriStability acreage information
• view AgriStability Crop Inventory Valuation

To register for MASC Online Services, contact your local MASC office and request a registration form. Complete the form and return it to MASC in person, by mail or by fax.

Can I complete my Seeded Acreage Report (SAR) with MASC Online Services?

MASC is currently studying the feasibility of allowing registered producers to complete their Seeded Acreage Reports (SARs) via Online Services. Currently, however, you must complete your SAR and send it to MASC in person, by mail, or by fax.

What is the deadline for making a hail or fire claim?

If you've experienced a significant loss (more than 5%) on a crop due to hail or fire, you must report the claim to MASC no later than 3 business days after the damage occurred.

When can I expect payment for a Hail Insurance claim?

Hail claims are normally paid within 3 weeks of the claim being finalized. Sometimes, like when a hail storm occurs early in the season, it is difficult to accurately determine a fair percentage of loss immediately after a storm. In these cases, an MASC adjustor will make a preliminary examination, record the appropriate information, and defer finalizing the claim to a later date - when the loss percentage can be determined more accurately.

What is the normal adjusting procedure for completing a post-harvest claim?

When completing a post-harvest claim, an adjustor should:

• locate and identify all harvested production
• identify all acres
• diagram and identify the applicable yard(s), bin locations or locations of stored hay
• for AgriInsurance claims, an adjustor will measure and inspect all bins, which includes climbing the bins and examining the production within. For Tame Hay Insurance claims, an adjustor will count the bales from each field and weigh a small percentage from each lot to obtain an average weight per bale.
• obtain representative samples of all stored production involved in the post-harvest claims. For Tame Hay claims, samples are obtained by core sampling a number of bales from each field or crop type.

MASC Lending FAQs

 

How often are MASC's lending rates updated?

MASC's reasonable and competitive lending rates are released on a monthly basis, and are usually posted on this site on the second business day of the month.

What can I use an MASC Direct Loan for?

You can use an MASC Direct Loan for a variety of purposes, such as the purchase of agricultural land or buildings, permanent improvements to land, construction or renovation of production buildings, construction of new on-farm homes or renovation of existing on-farm homes, purchase of breeding livestock, purchase of supply-managed quota, or for debt consolidation.

What is 'BGI'?

If you're a beginning farmer (between the ages of 18 and 39), you may qualify for loans made under the Bridging Generations Initiative (BGI). Under the BGI, you're eligible for incentives and options that are intended to help young producers get started in agriculture, such as a Young Farmer Rebate, a Management Training Credit, flexible financing (90% financing or 5 years of interest-only payments), and the Bridging Generations Mortgage Guarantee.

Manitoba Management Plus Program FAQs

 

How do I use the Regional Analysis Tools?

The MMPP Regional Analysis Tools allow you to search the MASC database of (aggregated) information provided by Manitoba producers. You may search by the yields of crop varieties, by fertilizer and pesticide use, by causes of loss covered by AgriInsurance and Wildlife Damage Compensation, as well as performing cross-query searches by crop variety and pesticide. These tools have recently undergone upgrades to improve functionality and performance.

What does 'Below Minimum Tolerance' mean?

MASC allows you to search its database of information provided by Manitoba producers. However, this data is always aggregated to protect their privacy. In cases with too few results from an area, the Regional Analysis Tools return a 'Below Minimum Tolerance' result. The tolerance threshold is set at 500 acres or 3 farms within a rural municipality or risk area (with the exception of the Wildlife Cause of Loss tool, which has a tolerance threshold of 3 farms per municipality or risk area).

Why do the fields of the Regional Analysis Tools take so long to populate?

The Regional Analysis Tools access and cross-reference a huge database of producer-provided information, and the MASC servers require time to process your queries. Your first query may take several minutes to load, but subsequent queries should process much more quickly. Please be patient while the fields (e.g. RMs, crops, and varieties) are populated.

How do I use the Regional Analysis Tools to get the provincial totals?

To find the provincial totals for all Manitoba, select 'All' municipalities or risk areas when building your search criteria.

MASC Website FAQs

 

How was the MASC website developed?

The MASC website is built with the Spry JavaScript Framework, a network of behind-the-scenes libraries that allow a rich user experience and ready access to MASC's most current data. The Spry libraries are augmented by the Google Custom Search and Google Maps APIs, the Lytebox library, and various other code snippets.

Much effort was made to create W3C-validated XHTML 1.0 (transitional) pages and CSS stylesheets. Where complete validation was not possible (due to non-standard Spry elements), other non-associated errors were eliminated.

Why do my pages take so long to load?

The MASC website was written with rural Manitoba's dial-up subscribers in mind. Graphics have been kept to a minimum (or optimized for the Web), and extensive re-use of cached items (CSS, JavaScript, etc.) has been employed.

If you're a dial-up user, your first few pages will load slowly - your Web browser is 'background loading' items the MASC website uses on most pages. Once you've loaded the first few pages (and allowed them to load completely), subsequent pages will load much faster. The speed advantages of re-using these items will last until the next time you clear your browser's cache (Temporary Internet files).

How often is the MASC site updated?

The MASC website is updated frequently as new programs are announced, existing programs change, and new data (e.g. dollar values) are released. Most updates are site-wide, so you shouldn't find two pages with contrary information.

Why does (X page) look funny?

The way Web browsers render Web pages is notoriously inconsistent - even the same browser on different computers can display differently! If you're having trouble viewing a page on the MASC site, please contact the Webmaster - webmaster[at]masc.mb.ca.