Mountain View County producers are going to take a hit in the wallet this year, according to Kent Clifford, inputs manager at the Richardson Pioneer terminal just outside Olds.
Clifford says thanks to the late spring and the September snowfall in the area, the quality of most crops has fallen. So crops that graded number 1 last year will likely grade number 2, 3 or feed quality this year.
As far as grains go, Clifford predicts most CPS (Canadian Prairie spring wheat) will grade number 2 at best.
“There's probably going to be quite a bit of feed,” Clifford predicts.
Hard spring wheat will likely grade even lower.
“It's more number 3 this year for hard red, and it's not a great number 3,” he says.
“It makes it difficult to market at a price that's going to cover costs. So a lot of this stuff is going to end up in the feed market, which is an over-supplied market already. So now, all of a sudden, it's ‘what am I going to get for this.'
“Volume wasn't too bad as far as yields; they were OK. But it's certainly the quality.”
The quality of canola is expected to vary widely.
“(In) canola we're seeing quite a mix of grades. So there's quite a bit of 1 and 2 canola. But anything that was done after the snow is probably 3 or sample, which is really, really ugly when it comes to pricing,” he says.
“That's where most of the feed barley is grown. There's some wheat and some canola, but a lot of barley. Because of the moisture this year, barley didn't stand up very well to it. It just typically doesn't as a variety, so they lost a lot, because it was way too wet,” Clifford says.
“Now, talking to guys who have taken off some canola and wheat, they've lost a fair amount too, just because of all the drowned-out areas,” he adds.
Clifford predicts some producers will probably try to hold back a lot of grain this fall, hoping for higher prices later.
“There is going to be some stuff held over, just because there's a pricing pressure because of harvest right now. Prices aren't very good,” he says.
“A lot of guys are looking into next year, like, starting in January, where usually prices get a little bit better.”
However, not everyone will choose to hold grain back -- or even have an option to do so.
“What comes into play is the quality of the bin at harvest time. If it's not that great a quality and they had to put it in with a little moisture – when normally it goes in really dry -- they're going to be looking to move it as quickly as they can. Otherwise, it could end up degrading in the bin; then they end up with nothing,” he says.
“So it comes down to what's the quality in the bin and the liquidity when they need liquidity. Some of these guys have to pay bills, so they're going to move what they need to to pay bills, then hang on to (the rest of) it.”
Last year in Saskatchewan there was a real run on grain storage bins and other temporary grain storage equipment as farmers tried to store all the bumper crop they had and deal with a backlog of grain moving to port.
Clifford doesn't think there'll be a huge run on grain bins in this province as farmers try to hold back on their grain, simply because grain bins are already hard to come by.
His estimate is that overall in the county, the harvest is about 65 per cent complete.
He says the completion rate varies widely, depending on which side of Highway 2 you live on.
“West of the QE II Highway it's more like 35 per cent complete. East (of the highway) they're more like 70 per cent complete,” he says.
Again, he attributes the lower figure west of the highway to the slow spring and the snow that fell in September.
“When you get east of the highway, things get a lot better. The yields are pretty good – canola in particular was a surprise. Everybody was thinking it wasn't going to be that great, but it's actually not that bad and guys are actually fairly happy with it,” he says.
He says all the crops in Mountain View County are now swathed. Farmers are now trying to get them all combined.
