A 166-page report on how the grain handling and transportation system
worked last year didn’t tell farmers the one thing they most wanted to
know.
Have all the changes of the last few years left them any better off?
Farm groups say that has to change, and the federally appointed grain
monitor says it will.
The report for 2001-02 will include a calculation of how much money the
changes have put into, or taken out of, producers’ pockets, says Mark
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Hemmes, president of Edmonton-based Quorom Corp.
But he cautioned that farmers might not like what they hear.
“My bet is when we do start cranking out those netback numbers you
won’t see any remarkable decrease in costs, if any,” he said.
He also acknowledged that the calculation won’t cover all of the cost
changes that farmers have experienced.
“Our mandate only takes us from the farmgate to the vessels,” said
Hemmes. “There is a grey area between the farmgate and the bin and I
know there are costs that occur in there.”
Officials with a number of farm organizations said last week that
unless the grain monitor includes all those costs, the end result won’t
have credibility with farmers.
“If it can’t tell us with any degree of precision whether we’re getting
the savings promised to us, it’s not much use,” said National Farmers
Union executive secretary Darrin Qualman.
He’s concerned that the methods used to calculate the netback will miss
significant costs involving such things as trucking and investments in
farmyards and grain storage.
Canadian Wheat Board director Ian McCreary, chair of the board’s
transportation committee, said when the government introduced the
monitoring process, it made a clear commitment to provide a measure of
whether or not farmers were better off.
“They’d better include all of the money going out of farmers’ pockets
directly if they’re going to tell us that,” he said.
That includes such things as the cost of re-designing a farmyard to
allow super-Bs to pick up grain, he said.
McCreary added that the blame for inadequacies in the report lies with
the federal government, not the monitoring agency, which he said has
made it clear to farm and industry groups that it wants to include that
kind of information.
The report for 2000-01 contained reams of detailed statistics on
matters like freight rates, elevation charges, grain movement and port
performance, but only a general comment that on average, the producers’
position remained unchanged.
Hemmes said that while the federal government hasn’t given the official
go-ahead, he expects the 2001-02 report will include a calculation of
the basis paid by farmers, broken down into eight components, including
such things as freight rates and incentives, country and terminal
charges and licensing and inspection fees.
Separate figures will be provided for wheat, barley and canola.
A number of farm groups say the only way to get an accurate picture of
the net effect on producers is to ask them through a survey.
But Hemmes said that’s not going to happen. Surveys are fine for
gauging public opinion, but the monitoring process requires data that
can be validated and substantiated as fact.
“Surveying is not really good for testing empirical data and that’s
what this is all about,” he said. Instead, the monitor will examine
cash tickets from sample locations across the Prairies.
Western Canadian Wheat Growers Association policy analyst Paul Earl
said the monitor should take a close look at the impact of the CWB’s
pooling system on farmers’ income.
He said pooling prevents individual farmers from benefiting from steps
they take to support a more efficient system, such as delivering to
high throughput elevators that receive freight incentives.
Hemmes said it’s proving difficult to track how much of the rail
freight and elevator savings being realized by grain companies are
actually being passed back to farmers without doing an extensive and
“intrusive” audit of the grain companies’ operations.
