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MASC History
MASC history begins with the long journey of Manitoba's agricultural producers - those who began with frozen and barren prairie and shaped it into the keystone of Manitoba's success.
The Selkirk Settlers were Manitoba's first agricultural immigrants, arriving in 1812 at the confluence of the Red and Assiniboine Rivers with 12 Merino sheep and some seeds from Scotland. "What stupidity to expect settlers to succeed in this land of ice and snow," the fur traders scoffed, "The country is doomed to external sterility."
The Red River colony was never too successful agriculturally, but it spurred faraway farmers to dream of free land. By 1831, more than 2,150 acres were in cultivation; 25 years later, it was 8,371 acres and Manitoba agriculture was supporting over a thousand settled families. By autumn of 1876, Manitoba produced its first wheat surplus and the fur trade was in steady decline.
Even then, farming was hindered by the natural perils of Manitoba. Frost, grasshoppers, and flooding often took crops and livelihoods, even as the tiny settlements grew and the Dominion Lands Act (Canada) brought thousands more settlers from around the world. New early maturing varieties of wheat like Marquis made frost less of a problem, but varietal differences still couldn't prevent the swarms of grasshoppers, disease, the 100-year floods, the hail-heavy thunderclouds, or the Dust Bowl of the 1930s.
Prior to 1938, crop insurance was a risky business for all involved, with most attempts failing due to lack of information, market fluctuations, overwhelming environmental conditions, and other related factors. In 1939, the Manitoba Crop Insurance Committee was appointed to investigate the feasibility of crop insurance in the province. That year Parliament passed the Prairie Farm Assistance Act (Canada), which provided basic crop insurance (farmers were charged 1% on deliveries and could collect $2.50 per acre on half their acreage when yields dropped below 5 bushels per acre).
MCIC Office, circa 1973
But by the 1950s Manitoba producers had grown dissatisfied with the PFAA program, having paid in $5 million more than they'd received. In July 1959, the Government of Canada passed the Crop Insurance Act(Canada), which provided the necessary backing for the Manitoba Legislature's Crop Insurance Test Areas Act and the birth of the Crop Insurance Agency (forerunner of the Manitoba Crop Insurance Corporation (MCIC)).
Meanwhile, the face of agriculture in Manitoba was changing. Farms were growing larger, mainly due to increased mechanization and the use of fertilizers, herbicides, and pesticides. As yields rose and machinery grew, so did start-up and input costs - as did the need for agricultural lending programs.
The risks associated with agriculture, however, had already bitten Manitoba's traditional financial institutions. The Farm Loans Act (Manitoba, introduced in 1917 and administered by the Farm Loans Board) provided long-term mortgages at low rates of interest with guarantees from the Provincial Treasury, but unfortunately the Great Depression and the Dust Bowl fell heavily on both private and governmental enterprises. The Federal Farm Loans Board assumed the burden of agricultural debt, but the provincial Farm Loans Board suffered heavy losses from uncollectible debt and was eventually liquidated.
As a result, long-term credit was generally unavailable, especially to young and beginning farmers, save for non-traditional sources like the Veteran's Land Act(Canada), family members, and the Industrial Development Bank.
To fill the void, the Manitoba Agricultural Credit Corporation (MACC) was established in 1958 to provide credit facilities for farmers, help producers to obtain credit, and assist the development of farms in Manitoba.
MCIC and MACC remained as separate entities until 2005, when it was determined Manitoba's agricultural producers and rural businesses could be better served by merging the two into a single corporation. On September 1, 2005, the Manitoba Agricultural Services Corporation was created.
Today, MASC is represented throughout the province by 19 Insurance offices and 16 Lending offices, supported by roughly 150 part-time adjustors and 150 full-time staff of insurance agents, lending representatives, administrative staff, researchers, programmers, analysts, and more.
The short history of MASC reflects the vision inherited from MCIC and MACC - to assist the agricultural producers and businesses of rural Manitoba.
