Western Grain Elevator Assn

[wmoebis]

From Feb 13th 2013 WP:
Wade Sobkowich, executive director of the Western Grain Elevators Association, said there is only one pot of money, and farmers will receive less for their grain if they are paid for storage or given less dockage.

“If they pay farmers for on-farm storage, then money has to be taken away from somewhere else,” said Sobkowich.

You can replace the words dockage or storage with any other charge/cap or investment in port/inland facilities.

I don't think anyone is going to give up anything. Except of course farmers.
They will just find another place to extract it from.

Remember the CGC doesn't set fees anymore, they just report what the elevators are going to charge you. Which means what to us now? Charges are not even transparent, they are hidden in the basis.

[tweety]

Agrville certainly is good at identifying the problem......

over and over and over and over.

[farming101]

Prince Rupert came into its own last year.

Design capacity 7M tonne /year. In 2014 they did 6.456M tonne. 209,510 tonnes in size.

Compare to Vancouver.
Bulk shipping terminal space - 906,250 tonne. 2014 19.6176 M tonne

To be fair Prince Rupert mainly handles wheat and canola while Vancouver handles everything. Still Prince Rupert did well last year.

[Tandem007]

Brave heart look on Google earth at Vancouver and tell us all how they could put in loop tracks. problem we've got as farmers is just shooting mouths cd without knowing facts

[fjlip]

And the solutions need statesmen/women in gov and business that values all of the chain fairly. None can be GREEDY. Could take a few generations.

[farmaholic]

Thank you sawfly....

[farming101]

Prince Rupert doesn't have loop track. Turned the place 30 times in 2014.

Again, to be fair to Vancouver, the port does a phenomenal tonnage each year. Grain is only part of it. Congestion is a fact of life there.

[fjlip]

Any one know how Portland compares? Like 10 times Vancouver?

[MBgrower]

Tandem... "we farmers"? Didnt you mean to say YOU farmers?

[Braveheart]

Tandem007, I know what it's like there. I've toured it from the land and harbour. I know about the congestion. The point I'd like to communicate isn't really about loop tracks. It's about the lack of foresight by Canadian grain exporters. Their planning, even with new investments is only current (barely). No one is looking at what will be needed 10, 15, 25 years out and building to that target.

I suspect some of the blame lies in the fact that we had a command and control system withe the single desk for so long that the future was never clear. We're in a new era now so time to ramp it up or get out of the way.

[bucket]

That's not true Braveheart. The graincos were paid very well from the cwb so sales and loading at port would move quickly amongst graincos.

They had the money to invest in the future and considering they were lobbying for more control, they are the ones to blame for not investing in better handling facilities.

[Braveheart]

Graincos usually charged maximum tariffs under board era. It didn't mean they made money.

Some years if the farm supply sales were down things were bleak. Do you think the Pools and UGG would have vanished if it was the gravy train you describe Bucket? Sure there were other issues, but they weren't wildly profitable.

But, I still maintain the central control of the single desk threw a wet blanket on any vision for the future.

[grassfarmer]

No wonder the trains are too busy to haul grain. In my area I've passed 3 frac sand unloading facilities in recent days - one 10 miles from the other, the second 13 miles in the other direction. All just started operating this winter. The biggest one is taking 4 trainloads a week. How much of the province/country is seeing this volume of extra train traffic demand?

[bucket]

Grassfarmer

As I mentioned in other threads k and s potash is building 6 -175 car unit trains for production to be online in 2017.

Statscan should have the numbers for increased required capacity already if they were doing their jobs.

Asking farmers about on farm stocks does no good if at the end no one builds track capacity.

It requires political clout to make alot of what is required to be done.

Farmers can call their mps until they are blue in the face. If the conservatives don't get it by now they never will.

[tstep]

With the number of oil track load facilities that have come on line in the last year and the new ones coming on line next summer, I know of 3 oil and propane/butane, and these are 120 car load facilities. The movement of grain will be even slower. The govt knows where the money is and that's not from Ag.