China isn’t the only one complaining about canola dockage.
Some growers are miffed that they get deducted for dockage on their delivery tickets and pay for cleaning while grain companies top up the dockage before sending the canola overseas.
Ernest Bittner, who farms near Carrot River, Sask., says the canola he delivers to his local elevator typically contains one to 1.5 percent dockage.
Dockage includes items like chaff from the plant, dust, wild oats, small seeds and seedpods.
He doesn’t understand why he gets deducted for that material when a shipment is considered commercially clean if it contains up to 2.5 percent dockage.
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“I believe the grain companies are holding the farmers ransom,” said Bittner.
The average dockage on a canola shipment to China is two percent, according to the Canadian Grain Commission.
“Why is the dockage higher than what we take to the elevator?” said Bittner.
He is mad that buyers pay grain companies for dockage, while the farmer is penalized for it. Especially when growers are paying through basis levels to have their canola cleaned.
Bittner isn’t the only disgruntled farmer. The issue has been raised in the Agriville commodity marketing online forum and with groups like the Saskatchewan Canola Development Commission.
The Western Grain Elevator Association deferred comment on the dockage issue to the Canola Council of Canada.
Brian Innes, vice-president of government relations with the council, said he understands grower angst surrounding the issue.
“I’ve heard that a lot. I think that’s a legitimate concern,” he said.
But he balks at the suggestion that exporters are getting paid for dockage while growers are penalized.
Dockage is one of the many quality parameters negotiated between buyers and sellers in determining the price of a shipment of canola.
“Exporters are getting paid the value that their customers put on their shipments in the same way that growers are getting paid the value of what they deliver,” said Innes.
Buyers are willing to accept a certain amount of dockage because they realize canola moves through a bulk handling system. It is not a specialty commodity.
Dockage levels are determined at the grain elevator by a grain company employee who uses a combination of hand sieves and a prescribed number of shakes to figure out what percent of a sample is dockage.
Innes didn’t have any numbers on how much dockage on average is contained in farmer deliveries but he thought it would be higher than what Bittner is reporting.
“I would say that’s low,” he said.
“That grower needs to talk to a lot more growers to understand that dockage is not always delivered at that rate.”
The Canadian Grain Commission does not track dockage levels in producer deliveries or in what arrives at the port.
Commission spokesperson Remi Gosselin said levels will vary depending on variables such as weather and how a producer sets his combine.
“Most combines now operate in a way that dockage will come in at somewhere around one to two percent,” he said.
Grain companies either clean the canola at their primary elevators or at their port terminals, depending on their infrastructure.
They use cylinder cleaners and screener sieve cleaners in combination with controlled air to isolate the unwanted material.
Innes said there is a misconception about dockage being added back into the shipment.
Canola seeds are much smaller than other grains such as wheat, which makes separating them from the dockage material more difficult, especially when there can be a lot of variability in the size and shape of canola seeds.
The result is that there can be up to 10 percent of canola seeds lost in the cleaning process, which would amount to 6,000 tonnes on a 60,000 tonne vessel.
“When you’ve done your cleaning for the dockage, you try to capture as much canola as you can from what was initially cleaned out. It’s that, that is added back in,” said Innes.
