Solutions on how to improve grain transportation efficiency to get Canadian crops to market and the problems farmers, grain handlers, railways, port terminals and government face during increased grain production was the focus of a recent University of Saskatchewan grain summit.

The Grain Handling and Transportation Summit 2014 held March 26 at the Saskatoon Inn and hosted by the Department of Bioresource Policy, Business and Economics (BPBE) in the College of Agriculture and Bioresources at the U of S brought together a wide range of stakeholders and experts to share information and discuss the current state of grain movement, price and income prognosis and any possible short- and long-term solutions to the current crisis.

“The idea of the conference was to provide a broad overview of the situation and to start to talk about solutions to the issues in a very broad conversation and not get preoccupied with trying to fix this quickly,” said Richard Gray, a U of S agriculture professor who helped organize the grain summit. Gray spoke on “Policy Options to Reduce the Basis” as part of session three of the conference titled “Markets and Policy Solutions.”

The day-long summit also featured sessions on “The Status of the Grain Transportation System,” “Shipper Agreements and Other Logistical Solutions” and lastly “Next Steps for Engagement and Finding Solutions.”

Gray said one of the factors that contributed to this year’s crisis that he highlighted in his talk is the need for a much better public forecasting of crops. He said farmers are now asked what they think is in the field either after harvest or before and in the past couple years those estimates were off by a long shot.

He said this has contributed to this year’s problem because railways weren’t anticipating the 2013 crop and didn’t become aware of it until September. Gray said that isn’t good enough notice for the railways to have sufficient crews hired, among other things, to handle it.

Another “issue that I brought up was the need for greater West Coast capacity,” he said, noting capacity at West Coast terminals is just over 20 million tonnes, while this year’s crop that needs to be exported to the most important market of Asia comes in at over 50 million tonnes. “Even if we did fix the rail situation tomorrow we wouldn’t be able to move it through the West Coast. There would be a lot of grain that would have to move east or all the way south to the Gulf of Mexico in order to hit salt water and then you’re hitting salt water in a market that is saturated with grain.”

Ian McCreary, a graduate of the Dept. of BPBE at the U of S and a former Canadian Wheat Board director, said his talk during session four of the conference presented an overview of this “central problem” of limited West Coast capacity and the lack of coordination that is causing everyone to try to ship through that coast. He said a discussion then followed about what could be learned from how the CWB would have handled it and finally some ideas were presented that could be considered as part of a solution.

To read more please see the April 7 print edition of The Davidson Leader.