Continental Market

[Hopalong]

By ending the board monopoly, Canada has gone part of the way toward a continental market for wheat and barley. We should look at going farther.
Board promoters used to tell us how it had an advantage in meeting customer demand for quality and service.
We have similar claims for our grade and variety registration system that remains in place with little change.
Time to align our system more closely with that of US with more emphasis on specs such as falling number and other tests rather than visual appearance, varieties and grain commission grades.
Different regulations on each side of Canada-US border cause more harm than benefit.

[hobbyfrmr]

Agreed. your suggestion makes good sense.

[bucket]

You mean a north American solution?

Holy shit - that's brilliant.

Maybe the same with transportation?

Guess those ideas have to come from the advisors? lol.

[blackpowder]

Might the same happen over time?
BNSF owns their covered hopper fleet. Spends 2.5B per year on maintenance overall.
What will Canadian taxpayers spend on the aged fleet they currently own?

[cottonpicken]

Are you meaning go head to head with the american farmer?

I'm guessing it wouldnt be long till an american farmer moves here,starts farming and they find mad cow in his grain.

[Braveheart]

It's already a Continental Market. We're all looking but can't see.

American end users buy Canadian grain on specs, and really don't give a damn what the CGC might assign as grade.

I assume with the Board reference, Hopalong is talking about wheat. Well, on any day there is a range of wheat prices across the Great Plains that includes Canada. Prices will reflect particular companies sales, access to transportation, risk tolerance, distance, corporate policy, and on and on.

If we throw into that the infinite mix of end users, biscuit, bread, noodles, etc, add the different classes of wheat complicated by what weather and different farming practices does to wheat specs, and different bids will be seen everywhere on the continent.

[Hopalong]

Thanks for comments. Wonder how far we go in our regulations to meet NA continental demands as opposed to off shore.
Example might be ochratoxinA where European limits are lower than US. Do we cater to one or the other and what about our own domestic market?
Brand Canada may work better for us in some markets than others, think we should be careful in how far we go with it.

[hobbyfrmr]

Hop along , you have some good points. Eastern Canada is a high population Center with milling capacity. A farmer can try to work with them the same way farmers want to sell into the U.S. this is not automatic success, but I know there are exporters and distributors in Montreal, Vancouver and other Canadian ports.
This requires the ability to clean your grain, and a person has to do their own due diligence on their buyers. It's a different model, but I don't think Bourgault, seed hawk, seed master, honey bee, Schulte etc. toss their production in a mix for another company to grade its quality, then sell it to export markets for them.