DAWSON CREEK, B.C. – Choice is the name of the game in this northern
British Columbia city.
If a farmer doesn’t like the price Agricore United is offering, he can
drive across the street to Pioneer, Louis Dreyfus or Parrish &
Heimbecker. If he has feed grain he can take it to Wanham Valley Feeds
or Agro Source or load his own producer car.
“The competition is tremendous,” said Ross Ravelli, a third generation
Dawson Creek farmer whose farmland circles the city.
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“I don’t think there’s another area like it,” he said.
“You have the option to deliver grain when you want to deliver it.”
There are more than one million arable acres in the region, about half
seeded to grain, oilseeds and grass seed and half dedicated to pasture.
So far this crop year, more than 103,000 tonnes of grain have been
shipped from Dawson Creek, up from 75,000 last year, said Paul Graham
of the Canadian Grain Commission.
Garry Scott, a Dawson Creek farmer, agreed that northern B.C. farmers
are in an enviable position.
“From time to time there are some real opportunities to lock in good
grain prices.”
He said it’s not unusual for grain companies to offer premiums when
they need an order filled fast.
Thousands of bushels of feed grain are shipped south from Dawson Creek
on BC Rail to Fraser Valley farms or to southern Alberta feedlots.
Dawson Creek also has one of the lowest freight rates in Western
Canada, with competition from two rail lines: Canadian National Railway
and BC Rail.
Agricore United and Pioneer are on the CN line on the east side of town
and Louis Dreyfus and Parrish and Heimbecker are on BC Rail’s line on
the west side.
Both lines are on two Canadian Wheat Board shipping blocks, ensuring a
good supply of rail cars.
“By having two different shipping blocks, it keeps things moving,” said
Scott.
The different shipping blocks keep the companies aggressively bidding
for farmers’ grain and ensuring a steady stream of grain cars, he added.
Dawson Creek hasn’t always been in such an enviable position, but the
combination of rail line abandonment in Alberta, grain company
amalgamation and two rail lines has created a model of competition.
“It’s quite a good situation,” Scott said.
This past November, Louis Dreyfus opened a 22,000 tonne grain elevator
in Dawson Creek, 100 kilometres west of Rycroft, Alta., where Agricore,
United Grain Growers and Cargill built their concrete high-throughput
elevators a few years earlier.
This spring Louis Dreyfus traded its elevator in Regina to AU in
exchange for AU Alberta elevators in Rycroft and Falher. They will take
possession in August.
Railway lines are almost nonexistent these days on the Alberta side of
the Peace region, and farmers have to haul their grain by truck to
Rycroft or Falher, the nearest elevators south of the Peace River.
Since many northern Alberta farmers have to truck their grain long
distances anyway, many are taking a look at Dawson Creek, with its
cheaper freight rates.
The maximum freight rate from Rycroft is $28.06 per tonne. From High
Level, Alta., in the far north, the maximum rate is $39 a tonne. At
Dawson Creek, it’s $25.07 a tonne.
Dawson Creek has the second cheapest freight rate in Western Canada,
second only to Calgary at $23.99.
Tracy Lussier, program manager with Louis Dreyfus, said the combination
of railways and good freight rates gives farmers “tremendous”
opportunity to move grain.
About 75 percent of the grain shipped from the company’s Dawson Creek
elevator comes from Alberta. A lot of that is from the far north in La
Crete and Manning.
“Once the grain is on the truck, there’s not a lot of difference in
costs when it’s coming from the far north,” Lussier said.
