the railways and grain movement

[bucket]

When Jack Turvey had to show the value of ipsco to Regina ....he hatched a plan to pay everyone in 2 dollar bills.....


Farmers have to find an innovative way to show our importantance to the nation....

My vote is we take a year off....

No one wants our product and apparently no one wants to move it.

[farmaholic]

When Jack Turvey had to show the value of ipsco to Regina ....he hatched a plan to pay everyone in 2 dollar bills.....


Farmers have to find an innovative way to show our importantance to the nation....

My vote is we take a year off....

No one wants our product and apparently no one wants to move it.

Domestically in Western Canada there would be waves... Tsunami waves! Internationally, in some grain markets, barely a ripple!

[bucket]

Railways would be hurt with little to no western grain.....

Although trucking would prove 2 points....the highway infrastructure and the fact railways are not the only option.

...should be but no politician can ask why they continued to consolidate their pulling power with higher trend line exports of all products....

Why western grain , potash and oil are not in the same room is beyond me.

[sumdumguy]

Park a semi in front of every MP’s house for weeks and all around parliament with the hoods up until the rail thing gets straightened out. When settling the country, railways were given all of their land for the promise to move grain and resources. Now not fulfilling- kick them out and nationalize or this country is toast.

[wmoebis]

I don't totally blame the RR for not increasing engine power or investing in more tracking. Look at the signals they have been getting from farmers and gov't over the last few years.

Early 80's they were told that we wanted to get rid of the Crow Rate we wanted more livestock production on prairies and the Crow was distorting the cost of transporting grain to port hindering expansion. LESS GRAIN BY RAIL.

Pay the farmers the Crow benefit instead of to the RR. Farmers said it would generate value added here on prairies, pasta and flour mills would be built instead of shipping raw product by Rail. LESS GRAIN BY RAIL.

Farmers wanted the right to sell grain on their own and have access to USA markets they protested, even went to jail for the right to truck grain across boarder. LESS GRAIN BY RAIL.

Gov't agreed plus even touted with great fan fair that pasta plants were going to be built on the prairies. LESS GRAIN BY RAIL.

Gov't and oil industry have been lobbying long and hard for pipe lines to be built to USA, eastern Canada and West coast. LESS OIL BY RAIL.

Gov't and environmentalists have been lobbying and have greatly reduced coal use and closed markets. LESS COAL BY RAIL.

All signals to the RR that Farmers, industry and Gov't are going to reduce the need for rail transportation. Why would they then invest in long term and build more infrastructure when continually threatened with reduced need. Now you want to show them that you can truck grain to west coast once they reach their cap on freight they will likely say go ahead and truck it.

My question is how many businesses would make massive investments or even give that threatens to not use them at every turn? Would you on your farm invest in something when you were told that it was going to have less market or customers were going to reduce consumption in the long term?

[Hopalong]

Remember cartoon of pioneer farmer raising his fist to sky and shouting “God damn the CPR””.

[farmaholic]

Sorry wmoebis, I don't buy that argument. It was all speculation, hearsay and political rhetoric.

I side with bucket and the trends....

Slash and burn mentality had more to do with the current crisis than anything, IN MY HUMBLE "UNEDUCATED" OPINION.

[bucket]

Wmoebis

The problem is the trend never indicated that was happening....

Yields continued to grow as did other export products....

The reality is the railways dropped the ball.

And continue to do so.

But government isn't providing accurate info nor are they watching the trends.

We are short infrastructure in this country .....can't grow without being able to export our products.

[blackpowder]

Did somebody really just mention the Crow????
Faceplant!!!

[Crestliner]

Did anybody do the math on the convoy? 4000 trucks to Vancouver would be 75 miles long from first to last. Take a about 1.8 million gallons of diesel. About $50 per tonne for fuel. Wow! Take two days to travel. So have to stop at Tim’s about 2 time per day...it would be a huge fun undertaking, and wouldnt be much more out of pocket for cost than we pay already for freight, except for the depreciation on our equipment and time (but that’s free right?? Because we work for free and we have the equipment already lol)

Also, need a buyer for the canola FOB Vancouver. Be interesting to see which Company would stand up to buy that controversial tonnage... Heck maybe just sell track Vancouver to a Japanese or Chinese buyer and make the extra margin and go around them all!!

It’s fun to talk and theorize...But the reality is that we farmers in Canada could never get along with each other long enough to be able to plan anything like this to get it done or pull it off to get the attention from the powers that be to the matter at hand. Everyone is smarter than the next guy and everyone is happy to try and eat the other guys lunch.

As many that are for something like this, there are as many against it. We are all independent business people competing against each other. Jealousy and greed runs strong among farmers. The organizers could be the smartest guys in the room and others would be critics of the plan. This and that would be wrong etc. Everyone has a solution, but it seem that nothing gets done and the problem persists.

The Ag industry and government know that we are a divided bunch.....and they make a great margin off the farmers ignorance and independence because they know as a group we couldn’t organize ourselves to get out of a wet paper bag. It’s just the fact.

So we have this little forum to vent, to bitch and moan about everyone and everything. We have our little pretend boards that allow the politically minded farmers to serve and have a winter time job and get some free trips. They can feel smarter than the average guy and collect levies that have questionable returns.

The real truth is that as a cohesive group the farmers in western Canada have a lot of power...A LOT! But we don’t take it and make it....We are too jealous and dumb to plan, execute and use the power....

So keep bitching and moaning and blaming everyone for our problems.

We have been royally screwed by transportion issues forever and the only person to blame is the one in the mirror.

I guess there hasn’t been enough pain yet for farmers to push to want to really improve the system or else we would be jumping all over trying to get change.