Wheat crops sit next to grain elevators at a Pioneer elevator in Stirling, Alberta. The Saskatchewan Wheat Development Commission is pushing for grain transportation to become the key farm federal farm issue.Chris Bolin/The Globe and Mail
The Saskatchewan Wheat Development Commission wants grain transportation to be the key farm federal election issue.
Commission chairman Bill Gehl says farmers have lost more than $5 billion over the last two years because of grain transportation difficulties.
The latest numbers from the Agriculture Transportation Coalition show Canadian Pacific Railway and Canadian National supplied 90 per cent of ordered hopper cars during Week 6 of the current crop year.
Gehl, who farms north of Regina, would like to see better numbers before Canada's reputation as a grain supplier is affected further.
"We're seeing customers not happy with the service that they're receiving from Canada and we've lost some of those customers, not only to the Americans, but actually out of the Black Sea as well.
"Certainly cause for concerns."
Gehl says the issue should be at the forefront of the federal election campaign in rural areas.
He would like to see farmers have direct input into plans for grain-handling and transportation in the future to avoid a repeat of the last two years.
A shipping bottleneck two harvests ago due to a shortage of rail cars left huge amounts of grain from a record crop sitting in bins across Western Canada.
It prompted the federal government to bring in rail transportation rules to speed up deliveries.