Canada will maintain its reputation as a shipper of quality grain in the post single desk environment, says Elwin Hermanson, the head of the Canadian Grain Commission.
Customers, grain industry executives and analysts have expressed concern that the Canadian grain grading system for wheat and barley will start to resemble the one used in the United States.
“Over time, my guess would be that competitive pressures will force harmonization,” Bill Wilson, an agribusiness and applied economics professor at North Dakota State University, told a University of Saskatchewan conference on life after Bill C-18.
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CGC chief commissioner Hermanson disagreed.
“Where it makes sense and where it’s an asset for marketing, obviously we should move in that direction,” he told the conference.
But he doesn’t anticipate complete harmonization.
“Because we have different environments in which we grow our grain, there will always be differences between the Canadian grading system and the American grading system, just as there are different grading factors between grains grown in Western Canada and Eastern Canada.”
Hermanson said there is nothing in the new Marketing Freedom for Grain Farmers Act that changes how grades will be set. The eastern and western standards committees will continue to propose changes and the commission will continue to have the final say.
And the commission still has to sign off on every vessel of grain leaving Canada.
“We will not issue a certificate final if those grade standards and those specifications haven’t been met,” he said.
Brian Rossnagel, a retired University of Saskatchewan oat and barley breeder, said it is imperative that Canada maintains its reputation for producing quality grain.
“We need to remember where we’re located. We are geographically in one of the toughest places in the world to grow a crop,” he said.
That means Canadian growers won’t be able to compete with those in the United States, southern Europe, Eastern Europe and parts of Australia in terms of yields.
“We simply don’t have a long enough growing season or most of the time enough water,” he said.
“We need to continue to produce the very best premium quality we can in order to maintain our place in the market.”
Hermanson said the commission will adapt in other ways, such as how it regulates licensed grain buyers.
The commission will also continue to allocate producer cars, which currently handle about four percent of Canada’s grain exports, the vast majority of which are board grains.
