For years, single desk supporters have said that a CWB without its monopoly would be doomed. After all, it doesn’t own any grain handling facilities.

Now, the story is that grain companies will want the volume that the CWB will bring to the table. The grain companies are also competitors, but why would they pass up an opportunity to handle additional grain?

The CWB has other advantages as well – a government guarantee on borrowing, employees with marketing experience, direct relationships with customers around the world.

It appears that farmers signing up grain with the CWB will be able to choose between pooling options or a cash price. They will also be able to choose which grain company to ship through.

Trains leaving elevators are likely to be a mix of CWB grain and grain purchased by the elevator company. There will have to be coordination for deliveries as well as shipments.

There are details yet to work out and it’s still tough to visualize exactly how it’s all going to function. However, if the CWB can remain a significant player, it will help bring competition to the marketplace.

I’m Kevin Hursh.

Lots of ink spilled over the CWB changes. Suffice to say that the marketing change ahead will require many adjustments by farmers and the entire grain industry.

Overall, we’re heading into a tougher grain market. The world economy has big challenges and grain stockpiles have been gradually rising. Although still pretty strong from a historical perspective, prices have slipped.

As we do our cropping budgets, best to assume a lower price for most commodities as compared to what we realized in 2011.

In contrast, cattle prices are expected to remain strong as the cow-calf sector enjoys a long-awaited return to profitability.

For both cattle and grain, soil moisture levels are a concern. The areas which faced flooding in the spring still have saturated soils at depth, especially on land that wasn’t seeded. For the rest of the Prairie region, the well below normal precipitation since the fall could be a harbinger of problems.

There’s lots of time for conditions to change, but most of the Prairie region will be relying on timely rainfall rather than soil moisture reserves for 2012 production.

Market access battles will continue in the year ahead. A Low Level Presence (LLP) policy is needed around the world so that minute quantities of a GM crop can’t be a barrier to trade. If a GM crop is fully registered by a couple of countries with recognized standards, it’s only reasonable to allow trace levels of that crop within other grain shipments.

With more GM crops set to come on the market in the years ahead, LLP will become increasingly important. As science has advanced, you can seemingly find trace amounts of anything anywhere. Regulatory authorities need to concentrate on genuine health and safety risks rather than GM witch hunts.

Trade authorities have had to deal with all sorts of other barriers in recent years. China had to be convinced that selenium in Canadian pulse crops was a good thing for human health. However, the Chinese continue to be concerned about blackleg in Canadian canola.

Mexican officials continue to restrict Canadian canaryseed due to inexplicably tight tolerances for weeds such as wild buckwheat. India has had some strange ideas about the fumigation of Canadian pulse crops. And Europe has had a ridiculously low tolerance for glyphosate residue on imported lentils.

If recent history is a guide, expect more of these trade concerns to surface in the year ahead. And expect environmental issues to become increasingly important in the marketplace.

Europe and the U.S. only want biodiesel from crop production that meets certain sustainability tests. Giant retailers such as Wal-Mart are moving to a sustainability index when deciding where to source their supplies. Increasingly, fast food giants such as McDonalds are dictating livestock care and handling standards.

Many consumers value labels such as “natural” and “organic” believing there are health, safety and environmental benefits. Unfortunately, perceptions often matter more than science. The consumer is always right, even if they’re misinformed.

It isn’t getting any easier to meet the needs of the marketplace and still make a dollar. It’s a rather safe prediction that we’ll see even more evidence of that in 2012.

One of the presenters was Christoph Rosnack who came from Austria and bought a farm north of Estevan, Saskatchewan a couple years ago. He’s developing an organic grain farm on about 1,300 hectares.

While 2010 was a reasonable year for him, 2011 was a washout. Still, he remains optimistic and happy with his decision to move to Canada.

Quite a different story came from Stefan Duerr, who grew up on a small farm in Germany. He was the first farmer from Germany to move to Russia when it opened up in 1989. Today, his company has 170,000 hectares and tens of thousands of dairy cows in a number of operations across the country. His goal is 300,000 hectares and 25,000 dairy cows by 2015.

There were great questions by the young people for all the panel participants. However, there seemed to be more interest in coming to Canada or Australia to develop a family farm than seeking fortune in a Russian mega farm.

 I’m Kevin Hursh.

In its September estimate of field crop production released October 4, Statistics Canada made major upward revisions to 2010 production levels. Without this, their canaryseed inventory number would have been negative.

Stat Can originally pegged last year’s seeded area at 295,000 acres with a yield of 811 pounds per acre. In the September report, that was revised upwards to 365,000 acres and a yield of 890 pounds. As a result, the production number has gone from roughly 102,000 tonnes to over 143,000.

That’s a huge revision and it would normally be negative for the market. However, I suspect the reason for the revision is that Stat Can has been underestimating farmer-stored inventory and now they’re forced to play catch up to make the numbers work.

For 2011, Stat Can has the seeded acreage down to just 190,000. The average yield is pegged at 944 pounds per acre for a total production of just 77,100 tonnes. Even in the big drought years, we’ve been producing more than that.

For August 1, 2011, the Stat Can estimate of canaryseed beginning stocks is a mere 39,000 tonnes. Add to this the estimated crop of 77,100 tonnes and you get a total supply of just 116,100 tonnes.

Yearly exports over the past five years have ranged from a low of 152,000 tonnes to a high of 204,000 tonnes. If Stat Can is even close to being right, international customers will be hard pressed to buy all the canaryseed they want over the next year.

http://www.agritechnica.com/preview_event_canada_2011.html

 If you’d like to know more about the group travel plans and the cost involved, just shoot me an email – kevin@hursh.ca.