New technology could shave hours off the time it takes to weigh grain arriving at port terminals, and save grain companies about $3 million.
But the National Farmers Union doesn’t want the Canadian Grain Commission to relax the rules on how it monitors inward weighing.
Cuts to that service could be the first step toward deregulation, which could threaten Canada’s reputation for high quality grain, said NFU president Nettie Wiebe.
“It is the tendency of the larger players to think they’d score more often if there wasn’t a referee on the ice.”
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The grain commission would continue to monitor grain as it is loaded from port terminals onto ships.
The Western Grain Elevators Association has lobbied for change since 1993.
“When we weighed grain using weights and a bar, the grain commission people were there to make sure the guy was doing it right,” said Ed Guest, president of the association.
“There doesn’t need to be someone sitting there nodding.”
Elizabeth Larmond, with the grain commission, agrees.
“It’s a job where people spend a lot of time watching when they can probably take out a tape and look at it in a couple of minutes,” said the grain commission’s director of industry services.
Elevator workers used to weigh grain under the constant supervision of a grain commission employee. The service cost grain companies $14.75 per car, or roughly 17 cents per tonne.
Computer records
The new approach relies on computerized records and tapes of the terminal’s daily weight calculations. It won’t compromise the commission’s mandate under the Canada Grain Act to monitor grain flowing through terminals, Larmond said.
But it will cut the cost to grain companies by nearly a third. Instead of $14.75 per car, they’ll pay $5.90.
At an average of 330,000 cars per year, grain companies can expect to save $2.9 million, Larmond said.
While the industry says those savings will be passed on to farmers, Wiebe at the NFU is skeptical.
But Guest said he’s not getting into that debate.
“If when the dust settles, the costs to us are reduced and not reduced back to the farmer, it will mean one of two things: Either we told you a lie or we haven’t increased something along the way that we would have otherwise.”
The NFU isn’t against adopting new technology to cut costs, but Wiebe said it shouldn’t happen if quality is threatened.
“We get very uneasy when it looks like they might do some short-term cost-cutting which looks like it might jeopardize in the long term what has taken us a very long time to build up,” she said.
Larmond said that’s not going to happen and it’s not what the grain companies are asking for.
Inspections and weighing of grain being loaded onto ships will continue as always, he said.
30 jobs lost
A decision on the new system should be made by the end of December and implemented over the winter, Larmond said.
The change will eliminate 30 positions, but Larmond said it won’t mean layoffs.
“Some are taking retirement and others will move to positions which have expanded in other areas.”
