SASKATOON – The New Year will get off to a good start for prairie grain farmers.
Final payments for the 1994-95 crop year will arrive in farmers’ mailboxes in the first week of January, the Canadian Wheat Board announced last week.
Those final instalments on last year’s sales have boosted total payments for wheat, durum and malting barley prices to some of the highest levels ever seen.
The final payment of more than $36 a bushel for top quality, high protein durum pushes the total price at export position to $297.51 a tonne, or more than $8 a bushel.
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According to CWB chief commissioner Lorne Hehn, these kinds of prices could become the norm.
“Our pool return outlook suggests prices could be even better this year, so that’s the good news,” he said. “We could see these strong prices for several years.”
The buoyancy of last year’s market is evident throughout the board’s sales catalogue. The total payment for No. 3 CW red spring wheat was $180.11 a tonne ($4.90 a bushel); even No. 1 CW hasn’t been worth that much since 1988-89.
Freight deductions included
All prices quoted are based on grain at port. Prices at local elevators reflect deductions for freight and handling, which last year averaged about $26.26 for wheat and $28.47 for barley.
Hehn described 1994-95 as a turning year in the international grain market. Wheat and coarse grain stocks fell sharply, due largely to drought in Australia, and the resulting tight world stocks boosted prices for farmers.
The only real disappointment came in the feed barley pool. The board’s well-documented problems getting supplies to service the lucrative Japanese market left final returns languishing around $102 a tonne at export position, a farmgate price of about $1.60 a bushel.
“It’s still disappointing, even though we’ve gone over and over it in the last couple of months,” said Hehn.
Payment above estimate
Aside from barley, the total payments for 1994-95 ended up well above the last estimate of 1994-95 pool returns issued by the board back in June.
For most classes of wheat, the actual prices ended about $7 a tonne above the last estimated pool return. For No. 1 CW, for example, the June EPR was $187 a tonne, while the actual payment turned out to be $195.59.
For durum, the gap was much greater. The last EPR for No. 1 CW amber durum was $248 a tonne, while the actual payment was $271.01.
Hehn said that reflects the fact that sizable volumes of durum were delivered in late July, just before the end of the crop year. That enabled the board to make sales in August and September into a strong market, with the returns going into the 1994-95 pool accounts.
For malting barley, actual payments were more in line with the EPR. Special select two-row fetched a total price of $177.17 a tonne, compared with the June estimate of $173.
