Grain Farmers of Ontario, the province’s largest commodity organization, representing Ontario’s 28,000 barley, corn, oat, soybean and wheat farmers, thanks the Canadian government for their intervention to keep talks continuing and hopes this results in a quick return of rail service.
“We need to keep grain moving. Farmers rely on a healthy transport system to move grains both domestically and to international export markets. If rail is not available to farmers and the agricultural industry, it will put a lot of pressure on the full transport system,” said Jeff Harrison, Chair, Grain Farmers of Ontario. “This has been a tough year for farmers with uncertain weather negatively effecting our planting season, higher costs that are building beyond our control, including the increasing carbon tax, fertilizer tariffs, and more.”
Estimates show the combined impacts on Canadian grain farmers due to a work stoppage would be between $40 million and $50 million a day for the next two months. There are more than one million bushels of soybean to be shipped between now and Sept 15.
“If we don’t ship those soybeans in the next month, we will have very compromised storage for this year’s harvested soybeans beginning in September,” said Harrison.
Additional concerns surround the delays caused by stoppages – previous transport stoppages have shown that one day lost will take a week to recover from
Source : GFO