It has improved in the last couple of years because of the improved commodity prices for the crops. That's one of the dilemmas we've had in the east over the last few years, when our major rotation crops were small grains. At $100 a tonne it's a necessary evil. You had to rotate for the healthier ground, but it certainly wasn't a cash generator for the enterprise. Therefore, a lot of the rotation became very tight, like a phase of one year in two, or two and a half at the most. That doesn't help the value or the quality and productivity of the potato crop.
In the last three years we've seen more alternative crops coming in--more grain, corn, soybeans, and canola. I hope the cycle of beneficial prices for those commodities will continue so that our growers will tend to ease back on potato acreage, which has happened the last three years, quite frankly. We've dropped probably 5,000 to 6,000 acres of potato production since 2009, and that's a good thing for several reasons. I think that a longer rotation will help mitigate some of the risk of potato yield as well.
As for linking crop insurance coverage directly with some of those practices--which is your direct question--there is reason for that. It's not going to be a popular one, I'll guarantee that. But again, one thing we can't do is to lose the effectiveness of these programs. If it is going to guide some better management practices along the way, then I'd have a hard job to argue against that, quite frankly. I do think we have to be more prudent with our public dollars, which are not the answer to everybody's problem. As farmers, we don't accept those sorts of things readily when we are forced into doing things that we would otherwise not want to. We also have learned to accept reality quite well over the years in a lot of things.
Again, it would be a process that would have to be entered into very thoroughly and studied well, but there could be value in it.