SASKATOON – Ken DeMong says he didn’t waste time putting recent Canadian Wheat Board adjustment cheques for barley in the bank.
“I’m not a large farmer and those kinds of payments really help out,” the Cudworth, Sask. farmer said, describing his two recent cheques, both over $2,000.
“I keep getting these payments in the mail and I like them.”
DeMong and other National Farmers Union members say the recent cheques show the worth of the wheat board.
NFU president Nettie Wiebe told a news conference here last week farmers who delivered feed barley in the fall will receive about $52.78 per tonne more for barley than they would have from the open market.
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Using Lethbridge, Alta. as a pricing point, Wiebe said farmers have already received $147.31 per tonne and will likely get a total of $165.31 per tonne, based on the board’s latest projections.
Wiebe said if farmers delivered their feed barley in September to Shelby, Montana, about 237 kilometres from Lethbridge, they would have received only $112.53 per tonne.
“This is a concrete example of how the Canadian Wheat Board works for us,” Wiebe said, adding most farmers need to deliver at least some of their grain in the fall.
The NFU based its conclusions on information about spot prices from the wheat board and a North Dakota agricultural newspaper.
The conclusions assumed freight of almost $23 per tonne, handling of $10.33 per tonne, cleaning of almost $3.50 per tonne, trucking charges of $20.10 per tonne, and an exchange rate of $1.35.
Wiebe said the data show her group is concerned about the fate of the wheat board for economical rather than ideological reasons.
“We just went to our mailbox and got ourselves those big dollars,” she said.
The wheat board data show the spot price at Shelby rose in late September, and climbed steadily, reaching more than $3.75 per bushel (Cdn) in November and $4 per bu. in late April.
The weighted average price at Shelby for the nine months was $3.39 per bu. – 34 cents per bu. less than the projected final price for wheat board barley this crop year.
The NFU said the wheat board also paid more for wheat delivered in the fall at Lethbridge than the open market at Shelby, but Wiebe said the difference was just under $29 per tonne.
