SASKATOON (Staff) – Don’t blame individual Canadian farmers for getting Americans riled over cross-border grain shipments, say some Saskatchewan grain growers.
They say the market south of the border didn’t go sour until major grain companies and the Canadian Wheat Board began shipping large volumes to U.S. elevators.
“The rhetoric always makes it look like us farmers are going to undercut each other to get the lowest price,” said Sam Wiens of Bracken, Sask. “Well, we want to market grain for the highest price we can, not the lowest.”
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In the Oct. 20 Western Producer, CWB advisory committee member John Clair said Montana farmers told him they were more upset by individual farmers trucking grain across the border than by wheat board sales. But Wiens and some of his neighbors say what the American farmers told Clair is wrong.
They say Canadian producers who had their 1992 crop frosted out found a profitable market shipping grain legally to the U.S., but were squeezed out when large exporters and the board began shipping large volumes at a lower price.
Bracken farmer Con Johnson says trucks from one major shipper were “lined up 20 deep” at Shelby, Mont., and those kinds of shipments angered the Americans.
Gale Johnstone, also of Bracken, said he has sold 275 tonnes of 3 CWRS wheat to U.S. buyers this year without a permit. He negotiated two contracts at an average price of $181 a tonne. The board projects a total farmgate payment for 3 CWRS of $118 a tonne.
He isn’t moved by the argument that he’s taking money out of the pockets of other farmers: “I have to look after myself. I can’t worry about the farmer down the road. I just can’t.”
