The Winnipeg Commodity Exchange oats contract is officially dead, months after it ceased living through day to day trades.
Commodity exchange officials said they believe the contract could not be revived, even though the exchange is hoping to save the struggling field pea contract.
Oats trading has swung completely to the Chicago Board of Trade, leaving no role for Winnipeg.
“We have a technically sound contract but no one’s trading it,” said Bruce Love, WCE director of marketing.
“So with zero volume and zero trade and a technically sound contract, we really felt there was no choice.”
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The contract’s last trade was in August 2000.
Leo Meyer, a Grande Prairie, Alta., farmer who sits on the WCE’s board of governors, said losing the contract after almost a century was a tragedy. But there was no way to avoid it.
“If there’s no trading, there’s no liquidity,” said Meyer, a vice-president of the Prairie Oat Growers Association.
“If there’s no liquidity, there’s no price discovery.”
Meyer said the Chicago contract also has low liquidity. It’s a reflection that world oat trade is small. The main market is in the United States, which buys only 2.5 to three million tonnes per year. The main suppliers are Canada, Finland and Sweden.
Meyer said he tried to interest the exchange in a milling oats contract, because both the Winnipeg and Chicago contracts were based on feed oats. But he was told it wouldn’t work.
“We just about tried everything with this, but the world trade, including Canadian companies, were doing their risk management through the CBOT,” he said.
The exchange delisted oat futures almost a century after they were created in 1904.
