Weather is proving to be a big challenge for grain shippers this crop year, but it’s not expected to result in any significant loss of grain sales by year end, says a senior official with the Canadian Wheat Board.
Rain, snow and wind storms on the West Coast, mud, rock and snow slides in the mountains and blizzards and frigid temperatures on the Prairies have created a witch’s brew of weather.
As a result, grain delivery opportunities have been limited in some parts of the Prairies at various times in recent months, especially for 1 and 2 CWRS wheat.
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But despite that, says the board, farmers should be able to move all the wheat and barley they want to sell through the board this crop year.
“We’re hoping to move all of the crop that farmers offer to us,” said Dennis Portman, the board’s director of logistics. “Certainly things have been going very well compared with last year.”
He added the board expects to ship about two million tonnes of 1 and 2 CWRS in the next six to eight weeks.
Generally speaking, the handling and transportation system worked smoothly until mid-December, when bad weather started to affect railway operations at the West Coast. As a result, rail car shortfalls began to develop, with one railway falling some 2,500 cars behind at one point.
“That meant we had to significantly reduce shipping programs,” Portman said.
That shortfall was largely made up by late December, but then the weather turned bad again, creating more shortfalls in the past two weeks.
“Hopefully the worst is behind us, and if so, I’d have to say the railways have done a pretty decent job through all this,” he said.
That may be cold comfort to farmers in areas that haven’t had cars, but Portman said the board is aware of those problem areas and is working with other players in the industry to deal with them.
“Yes, movement has been very limited to now. We hope we can address most of the problems that are out there, but there are always going to be issues.”
The board’s eastern export program is running smoothly, he said, projecting that the board should ship around 1.2 million tonnes by rail this winter to export elevators on the St. Lawrence River, the biggest such program in 15 years.
