Harvest season has gone off track for local farmers who rely on the rail system to transport their grains.
Last Thursday, Canada’s two major railways —Canadian National Railway (CN) and Canadian Pacific Kansas City (CPKC) — locked out unionized workers due to a contract dispute, resulting in a rail stoppage across the country. The same day, CPKC workers went on strike.
The federal government responded by saying it would enforce binding arbitration between the union and rail companies. The Canada Industrial Relations Board ordered the rail employees back to work by Monday, Aug. 26.
The two rail companies ship about $1 billion in goods each day, and it could take weeks to catch up.
The local grain sector is feeling the impact, since farmers are in the midst of harvesting crops.
According to the Canola Council of Manitoba, lost exports of canola seed amounts to about $11 million per day. In addition, stopping canola production would cost the industry about $20.5 million per day in lost sales of canola and meal.
The Western Grain Elevator Association notes that grain companies had taken steps to halt grain movements, which impacted shipping for a week prior to the stoppage. Each day of lost shipping results in a week of recovery time.
Trevor Buchanan, a grain farmer at Meridian Acres in Argyle, said they anticipated the stoppage.
“It’s just part of a game that everyone’s playing, I guess. It definitely throws a wrench into stuff. In our situation, we almost have enough storage, so the only affect would be cash flow and not being able to market when we want to,” said Buchanan, who grows wheat, soybeans, canola and corn.
“There’s one thing I know about farmers — they’re very resilient and resourceful, so they’ll get it done.”
Ryan Elliot is another local grain farmer at Storylea Hay and Grain Farm, east of Stonewall. He operates the farm with his dad Bob, with help from his mom Karen, wife Chelsea and several team members.
“I don’t think the timing is a coincidence. This is a pretty busy season for grain deliveries,” said Elliot, who farms wheat, canola, soybeans and oats in their cereal rotation, plus hay to bale.
“There have been rail strikes before, but I don’t think there’s ever been both rail lines at the same time and I don’t think it’s ever been at harvest. This kind of puts the whole industry in a jam, but we’ve been settled on our farm for 101 years. There’s been a lot of challenges, but this seems to be a new one. It’s among the list of things we don’t have control over as producers.”
Elliot expects that many producers will be tight on storage, but they’ll find a way to make it work.
“So far, the wheat has been yielding pretty good, so that’s both a blessing and a curse with the storage issue. But it’s a one-year issue, so everybody will get by,” Elliot said.
“The biggest concern is the loss of trust in our export system for buyers in different countries. We’re going to lose a lot of favour in other countries for selling our product to them. We’re trying to maintain our reputation in the world as a good export partner of grains, but this is going to hurt our reputation.”
Farmers need to be adaptable, but this situation has created additional stress during the busy harvest time.
“Our biggest threat lately has pretty much just been government policy. It’s all stuff we can’t control with the rail strike and the carbon tax,” he said. “It’s really put production agriculture in a tight spot. But we’ll find our way out of it.”
