explain to dumb aussie farmer

[dmlfarmer]

Mallee: Total commercial storage (primary, transfer, inland terminal, and port terminal)in Canada in 2014 was 12,086 265 bus. This is down from a peak of 19,602,800 bus. of commercial storage in 1970. Compare that to our 2014 production in Canada of about 80,000,000bus.(average crop) and you will understand why we have a grain movement bottlenecks. Unlike Australia, most grain produced in western Canada especially is stored on farm for most of the time until it is called for export.

[dalek]

I think your missing some zeroes. Considering the nearest elevator to me is over 3 million bushels, all new in the past 5 years.

[tstep]

What part of Aussie land you at Mallee. I was down there 37 years ago to be exact. Work on a farm in WA couple hours east of Perth. Traveled by car from Perth to Melbourne then a bus trip up throu Cobber peddie, Alice springs, Mt Iza and over to east coast down to Sydney and out to Canberra. Had an awesome time. Drank lots of tooies, XXXX, fosters. The Aussies love Canadians at that time.

[ColevilleH2S]

I would think dmlfarmers numbers are in tonnes not bushels.

[dmlfarmer]

sorry, all figures provided were in tonnes not bushels. Direct from CGC website and stats Canada.

[malleefarmer]

80,000,000bus.(average crop)

so 8 million tonne or 80?

so even if you had a wonderful elevator system were you deliver during harvest and no on farm the elevators would still have the rail issue?

so basically not enough railcars?

current problem in south Australia is wheat to be exported to countries were Europe is competing they cannot get a look as our dollar has fallen against American dollar but not euro so were uncompetitive and the now flooding domestic market with wheta pegged for export so prices at endusers are subdued

[Hopalong]

From what we see at local elevators, it is not so much a shortage of railcars but shortage of engines and crew to move them.
Elevators load them but cars often sit for two days to a week before railways move them.
Some say there is bottleneck at port end, hard to tell if it is transfer elevator slowness and lack of capacity or railway slowness again.
Growers are partly to blame for lack of surge capacity by unwillingness to pay extra for it.
Suspect that, one way or another, we pay a price even if it is not through freight rates.
Customers can offer lower prices if they can't count on our delivery system to get it in ships on time.

[Hopalong]

Railways are reluctant to invest in surge capacity for grain, saying that extra capacity may be idle for parts of years and not return revenue.
Growers and graincos still count on political pressure to get governments to regulate or legislate grain movement.

[bucket]

Could cars be made multi purpose?

When potash is slow use them for grain and vise versa?

This can't be a difficult problem to overcome?