Exports of the major grains and oilseeds will be up by nearly 20 percent this year, to just over 27 million tonnes.
But officials at the Canadian Wheat Board say the numbers would have been even higher if not for this winter’s grain shipping crisis.
“We’re talking about at least another million and a half tonnes that could have been moved this crop year that wasn’t because of transportation difficulties,” said CWB information officer Deanna Allen.
With three weeks left in the 1996-97 crop year, exports of wheat, barley, oats, canola, flaxseed and rye totalled 24.6 million tonnes.
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Agriculture Canada officials say that by the end of the crop year July 31, export shipments will be around 27.3 million tonnes.
That will be up substantially from last year, when a small crop limited exports to 22.9 million tonnes. But it will be less than some in the grain industry had hoped for last fall.
“These numbers are a little lower than we had forecast at one point,” said Glenn Lennox, wheat market analyst for Agriculture Canada. “But the good news is it’s not as low as we thought we were going to have to go.”
Amount forecast
He’s forecasting wheat exports of 14.7 million tonnes, along with four million tonnes of durum. Last year’s totals were 12.9 million and 3.3 million respectively. That will leave a carry-over of 8.9 million tonnes, up substantially from last year’s 5.6 million tonnes. The wheat board won’t release its own carry-over numbers until Aug. 7.
The department forecasts barley exports of 3.8 million tonnes (2.8 million a year ago), oats 1.35 million (1.26million), canola 2.38 million (2.8 million), flaxseed 670,000 (842,000), and rye 150,000 (171,000).
With the crop year winding down, the handling and transportation system is probably running better than it has all year, said Cam Dahl, of the Car Allocation Policy Group.
Fewer grades
In one sense, it’s simply a matter of the system operating the way it should, he said, but the fact that current shipments consist mainly of wheat board grains is also helping.
“The fewer grains and grades the system has to handle, the better it does,” said Dahl.
CP Rail has been complaining in recent weeks that it is shipping more grain to the ports than is being unloaded.
“There is good momentum in the country and in movement to the ports, but with port unloads still falling short of target week by week, it raises questions about the sustainability of current west coast targets,” said CP vice-president Rick Sallee.
Dahl acknowledged that unloads at the West Coast have been slightly below target, but said it’s not a crisis situation.
“Vancouver could have done better, but there’s not something to point to and say why,” he said.
One factor may be that with 30,000 hopper cars in the system and no winter storms or mudslides to contend with, there is probably excess rail capacity in the system.
“The railways can offer a lot of cars and when that happens there is a tendency for shippers to take that capacity, so perhaps their cars don’t get unloaded as quickly as they would in a rationing situation,” he said.
Allen of the CWB said the board is pleased with the way the grain system is operating.
She said the railways are putting out weekly press releases complaining about poor unload performance at west coast ports in order to “draw attention away from their own problems and throw it somewhere else.”
