Prairie farmers are getting a lesson in Canadian geography and human
nature in their search for cattle feed.
Charmaine Walker received a good response after she posted a note in
Alberta Agriculture’s General Store website that she wanted to buy 200
hay bales for her purebred Shorthorn cattle.
Walker received calls and e-mails from Nova Scotia, New Brunswick,
Manitoba and Montana offering hay at a reasonable price if she could
arrange trucking to her central Alberta farm.
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A neighbour also offered hay for $125 a bale.
“We can’t afford that,” said Walker of Tofield, Alta. “When people in
Ontario are offering it for nothing, I don’t understand people’s greed.”
Marlene and Marvin Javorsky of Onoway, Alta., are looking for 1,000
round bales to feed their 160 cows plus calves, replacements and bulls.
The cattle are already eating the hay baled earlier this summer in an
attempt to limp through until a skimpy silage crop is in the pit. The
Javorskys’ ability to buy feed at a reasonable price and the size of
their silage crop will dictate how many animals they can keep this fall.
“I’m so proud of the Ontario people for sending hay out here for
farmers, yet everyone around here is gouging their fellow neighbour.
You have no idea what kind of gouging is going on around here,” she
said.
Even Alberta’s premier Ralph Klein suggested some farmers were taking
advantage of others in their search for hay.
“This is terrible,” Klein told reporters after a caucus meeting.
“It’s now time to be neighbourly and fair and understand with
compassion the plight of the farmers who are suffering,” said Klein.
He later softened his remarks about price gouging.
“If this is occurring as reported, then I want to reiterate how much I
deplore that kind of activity. But I’m sure that if it’s occurring at
all, it’s a very isolated incident. I know that the overwhelming
majority of Alberta producers are anxious to help their fellow farmers
and ranchers, not take advantage of them.”
Norm Moore of Alder Flats said it’s ironic Klein is calling for
moderation in hay prices but not for oil and gas.
“It’s OK to charge market price for oil and gas but not for hay.”
Raymond Moffitt doesn’t think he is price gouging. He sold round barley
and wheat bales off his field for $40 each. He charged $75 for the pea
straw.
“We figured it was fair. We may have got more, but it was fair,” said
Moffitt of Radway, north of Edmonton.
In a good year he may get five or six bales an acre and charge $15 a
bale to make $75 an acre. This year he got one bale off each acre and
charged $40 a bale.
The price for each bale has increased but at $40 an acre, it’s almost
half what he would get from selling his straw in a normal year.
“That’s not gouging.”
In a normal year he may get $1.50 a bushel for his barley. This year he
may get closer to $4 a bu.
“Maybe it’s our turn.”
