There are several different issues with the delays in grain movement, which is a month to two months behind schedule in this area for getting older contracts cleaned up, but one local farmer doesn’t believe a resolution is coming anytime soon.
“We’re cleaning up our January canola contracts getting to the end of February right now,” said Davidson farmer Rob Stone, noting the delay is also stopping farmers from doing any new contracts for the next few months. “We could have probably had that cleaned up sooner, but the weather didn’t work for us and we weren’t concerned (about) moving at that point. There were a lot of people who jumped in line to make sure they were delivered too, so from our experience it’s not horrible. It was worse and it can get worse again if the railways don’t deliver. They missed two trains in a row at Richardson, so two weeks in a row that there was no cars and (if) you start having that happen on a consistent basis it really affects their capability to do any business.”
Stone said little accountability for the railroads to move the grain volume and honour their service agreements is still only one of the issues with the backlog of grain movement. He said the main problem is the grain companies not pushing hard enough in a public forum for improved service, which would include more railway employees and more engines dropping off cars and picking them up.
“There really hasn’t been a lot of pressure from the grain companies to this point,” he said. “It’s a tough one for sure, but the biggest issue is everyone has got a different reason why the railroads aren’t doing their job or performing to our expectations and the old excuse of it’s winter, it’s cold, that sort of stuff, (well) it’s cold and winter every year. We need to find better solutions (instead of) making excuses.”
Greg Brkich, MLA for Arm River–Watrous and a Bladworth farmer, said the system is backed up about two months due to several factors including the large crop grown last year, bad weather conditions and a couple November derailments. He said the province is trying to find a solution to this through meeting with both CN (Canadian National Railway) and CP (Canadian Pacific Railway) and grain companies to come up with a quicker method of getting grain moved.
“The short-term (solution) is for the railroad companies to put more crews on and put more trains out there,” said Brkich. “Long term is we have to sit down with the (grain) companies and the railroads to develop a long-range plan to handle this kind of volume.
“You go back 10 years (and) we’ve grown bigger crops (almost every year). With the improved farming techniques that are out there we expect this to be the norm, so the problem has to be looked (at) into the future. This isn’t a one-time problem.”
Brkich said there are penalties in the Federal Fair Rail Freight Service Act that grain companies can pursue to make sure the railroads perform up to expectations, but the companies haven’t been using them. He said that is something the province is asking the companies to use to solve the backlog problem because it is only the grain companies that can bring action forward.
To read more please see the February 24 print edition of The Davidson Leader.