Already feeling rushed, the last thing Zenneth Faye needed was a further seeding delay. But that’s what he was confronted with last week when the anhydrous ammonia he bought in the fall didn’t show up in time for seeding.“It’s unreal. There is going to be hell to pay at the end of this,” said the grain farmer from West Bend, Sask.“In the last two days, I’ve lost 500 acres that I could have seeded. The clock is ticking.”Mounting frustration with fertilizer delivery delays is palpable in a province where seeding progress is well behind normal.Faye has spoken to farmers in Yorkton, Balcarres, Canora and Fort Qu’Appelle who are all facing the same dilemma.“There are people with half a million dollars worth of equipment sitting out in the field that is not turning a wheel when the weather is nice. And now (forecasters) are calling for rain,” he said May 21.Anhydrous ammonia accounts for about one-quarter of the total nitrogen delivered into the ground every year. Faye said it is unacceptable for him to wait 10 hours for delivery of an insufficient amount of product.Larry Bryck, a producer from Ituna, Sask., shares his anger.“We’re getting one tank per day. We go through probably three tanks per day,” he said.“The weather is nice. You want to keep moving. The field conditions are finally right that we can go. But we can’t go because we don’t have the fertilizer.”Bryck estimated he has lost 500 acres of seeding due to delivery delays.“We have to keep getting every hour we can out of this and we’re sitting because they can’t supply us the product in time.”Dave Finlayson, vice-president of science and risk management with the Canadian Fertilizer Institute, said the delivery delays are due to federal safety regulations governing trucking hours of service.The institute submitted an application to Transport Canada on Dec. 24 calling for more flexibility in shipping fertilizer products during the spring seeding season.Similar exemptions have been granted to Canada’s oil well field service industry.And the U.S. fertilizer sector received sweeping exemptions from hours of service regulations on March 18.In a brief prepared on the subject, the fertilizer institute noted there was a “growing concern” that farmers will not be able to receive their fertilizer shipments in time for the 2010 planting season.Weather uncertainty and a global economic crisis caused farmers to cut back on fertilizer purchases in 2009, leading to a backlog of demand in 2010 to boost depleted soil nutrient levels.Ian Wishart, president of Manitoba’s Keystone Agricultural Producers, has heard about delivery delays in his province of one or two hours.Humphrey Banack, president of Alberta’s Wild Rose Agricultural Producers, said delays have not been an issue.“They have a few more trucks around here,” he said.Banack noted that Alberta farmers are closer to fertilizer production plants.Faye has heard that trucking firms like Paul’s Hauling Ltd. and Westcan Bulk Transport can’t keep up this year because seeding started around the same time across the Prairies. Both firms were contacted for this story but did not respond in time for The Western Producer’s production deadlines.
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