SASKATOON – Keystone Agricultural Producers has asked the prime minister to intervene to make sure prairie farmers don’t have to pay next year’s freight rate on this year’s crop.
When freight rates roughly double on Aug. 1, the commercial elevator system will be filled with last year’s grain, delivered under the subsidized 1994-95 freight rates.
But when it’s shipped out of the elevator, the Crow Benefit will be gone and farmers will have to pay the new higher freight rate. For board grains that money will come out of the 1994-95 pool accounts and be shared by all producers; for non-board grains individual shippers will have to pay it.
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Rates unfair
In an April 5 letter to Jean ChrŽtien, KAP president Les Jacobson said that’s not fair. He said all grain carried over into the new crop year should be shipped to port at 1994-95 freight rates.
An official in KAP’s Winnipeg office said that should include 1994 crop stored on farms as well as grain that has been delivered into the elevator system.
In his letter, Jacobson said due to recent labor problems in the grain industry, farmers could easily find themselves with “a substantial carryover” through no fault of their own.
The Canadian Wheat Board has also asked the federal government to allow those carryover stocks to be shipped at the old freight rate, but so far Ottawa has said no.
Goodale replies
Speaking in the House of Commons last week, agriculture minister Ralph Goodale told questioner Leon Benoit (Reform-Vegreville) that the new rates will apply to all grain shipped in the new crop year.
“One date must be chosen,” he said. “We have picked Aug. 1, 1995, as the only logical date that makes sense.”
In his letter to the prime minister, Jacobson also raised the issue of equal treatment for different regions of the country, noting the elimination of the Feed Freight Assistance program for eastern grain buyers was delayed three months and adjusted in several other ways in response to lobbying by affected groups.
“I can assure you that agricultural producers in the prairie region view (that) as a serious example of Canadians in similar positions being treated very differently by policies of the federal government,” said Jacobson.
