A proposal has been abandoned that would have required farmers and the grain handling system to take samples and sign declarations every time a load of grain changed hands.
The Canadian Grain Commission announced last week that after consultations with industry groups and an independent analysis, it would not introduce a system of mandatory variety eligibility declarations.
The costs to farmers outweigh the potential benefits by too much to justify going ahead, it said.
“We believe a mandatory VED system would not serve the interests of producers and other key stakeholders in the industry at this time,” said assistant chief commissioner Terry Harasym.
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The costs of VED were estimated at around $80 million a year, while the benefits were pegged at $40 million.
VED was unveiled by the commission in January 2003 as a way to deal with the problem of unregistered varieties getting into grain handling and export channels and undermining Canada’s grain quality control system.
The system was designed to enable instances of unregistered varieties to be traced back to their source, with the responsible party held financially accountable.
It was also seen as a way to encourage the development of desirable non-milling wheat varieties that are visually indistinguishable from existing classes of milling wheat.
Instead of VED, the commission has proposed a strategy of wheat quality assurance:
- Development of “rapid and affordable” technology to identify varieties.
- Increased monitoring of rail and vessel shipments by the CGC to identify unregistered varieties and downgrade shipments accordingly.
- Restructuring the official classes of western wheat to enable the development, registration and handling of non-milling wheat.
“We remain committed to resolving the issues the VED proposal was intended to address,” Harasym said in describing the new strategy.
The National Farmers Union, which had lobbied against VED as complex, unworkable, failure-prone and costly, welcomed the announcement.
“I think it’s really important that the CGC specifically notes that they’re doing this because it wouldn’t be good for farmers and it would be costly for farmers,” said NFU executive secretary Darrin Qualman.
The farmers union has criticized the CGC in recent years for being more concerned with the interests of grain companies than farmers.
“This is a very positive sign,” said Qualman.
A spokesperson for the Western Grain Elevators Association said while he hadn’t had time to analyze the CGC’s report, the elevator companies remain concerned about how liability will be assessed if unregistered wheat shows up in rail cars or export vessels.
“We’ll need a mechanism to en-sure that if misgrades are not a result of anything a grain company did wrong, then the responsibility is passed on to whoever did do something wrong, such as misrepresent the grain at time of delivery,” said Wade Sobkowich.
