Ottawa supports Hay West with an additional $3 million

Dec 17, 2021

This funding will help cover shipping costs

By Diego Flammini
Staff Writer
Farms.com

A program designed to transport hay from farmers in Eastern Canada to producers in the Prairies is receiving more funding from the federal government.

Agriculture and Agri-Food Minister Marie-Claude Bibeau announced an additional $3 in federal funding for the Hay West program. This brings the government’s total support to $4 million after committing $1 million in September.

“Since August, Hay West has shipped 5.6 million pounds (about 150 shipments) of hay from the Maritimes, Quebec and Ontario to farmers in need,” Bibeau told reporters on Dec. 15.

These initial shipments have helped feed about 17,000 head of cattle on more than 75 farms across Western Canada.

In the last month, however, no hay has traveled west.

Farmers in Eastern Canada have offered upwards of 100 million tonnes of hay to be shipped west.

But there’s not enough money to cover the transportation costs.

Shipping costs average between 15 and 20 cents per pound of hay. This means that at 15 cents per pound, it would cost about $15 million to ship all 100 million tonnes of hay.

While the government funding is welcomed and will help Prairie producers receive hay for their livestock, it falls well short of the total support needed, said Mary Robinson, president of the Canadian Federation of Agriculture (CFA), the organization spearheading Hay West.

“These funds will help avert disaster for a few months,” she told reporters Dec. 15. “But we will need more hay to keep western herds viable and avoid culling valuable breeding stock.”

This recent government funding could help producers until March of 2022, Robinson added.

CFA had originally asked the federal government for $6 million.

But even that wouldn’t be enough money.

“We now know both the demand and potential supply of hay greatly exceed what $6 million would allow us to transport,” she said, adding the hay deficit in the west is about four million tonnes.

CFA is urging industry to come forward with donations towards Hay West.

CN Rail has donated $125,000 and committed to matching further donations up to an additional $125,000.

“The more funding we secure, the more breeding stock we can help maintain and the faster we will recover from this,” Robinson said.

Farm Credit Canada, the Ontario Federation of Agriculture and the government of Prince Edward Island have also donated to the cause.

Farmers who donate hay can receive payments for their hay. Many of them have donated the money back to Hay West, Robinson said.

Video: Western Canadian Agriculture: Hard Times Made the World's Best Farmers

Western Canadian agriculture produced the most advanced farmers in the world not through abundance but through adversity. The crow rate fell. The wheat price went nowhere. The brown envelopes stopped.

When the subsidies disappeared, the bad farmers left and the good ones stayed. And the ones who stayed could not just grow wheat anymore. They started growing lentils and canola and peas and flax and faba beans. They built crop rotation. They got serious about agronomy because there was no government backstop. That process produced the Western Canadian agriculture Dennis Bulani describes in this clip: the most advanced, most educated farming culture in the world.

His contrast with Iowa corn and soybean farmers is sharp. At a DeKalb farmer meeting in Okoboji, Iowa, he asked what crop rotation they ran. Beans on corn stubble, corn on bean stubble. How do you fertilize? The co-op agronomist handles it. Have you considered other crops? No need. We make so much money on corn and soybeans. Western Canadian agriculture was never allowed that comfort. And now those Iowa farmers are watching soybean markets lock up with China and corn prices slide, and they do not have the agronomy knowledge or the research base to pivot. Western Canadian farmers adapted on a dime because they had done it before.

Dennis also makes the case that Western Canadian agriculture keeps adapting in real time. Low commodity prices over the past year have pushed growers to look seriously at precision spot-spray technology. He knows a neighbor who bought a sprayer with the seeing-eye system and sprayed only 80 out of 320 acres. As a chemical retailer Dennis acknowledges that will affect his sales. He supports it anyway, because if it advances Canadian agriculture and makes farmers money, that is a good outcome.

The lesson Dennis draws from the tale of two farms: continuous improvement is the only durable strategy. When canola was $22 a bushel some growers went to Arizona instead of the Crop Production Show. When the price came down those same growers came back to the research and the discipline. Products do not go on Rack Petroleum's shelves unless they pass a replicated trial first. That is what Western Canadian agriculture built through hard times: farmers who do the work whether the times demand it or not.

Dennis Bulani is CEO of Rack Petroleum and Ultimate Yield in Biggar, Saskatchewan. Dan Aberhart hosts GTF Productions, Western Canadian Agriculture's foremost live briefing platform and its foremost AI training platform for ag operators