Organic grain harvest at different places in Ontario, Prairies

By Glen Hallick
Glacier FarmMedia staff

The organic grain harvest in Canada stood largely at two different places. In Ontario, combining was more advanced compared to that in Western Canada, where it was just getting started.

Harro Wehrmann of Wehrmann Grain and Seed Ltd. in Ripley, described the harvest in Ontario as “challenging” due to the weather.

“Everything was wet,” he said, noting that quality varied. “In our area we had good qualities, but a lot of areas to the south and in Quebec seen low quality numbers.”

Wehrmann commented that yields organic spelt and corn were good, while those for winter wheat were “nothing to write home about.”

• RELATED: Organic prices for late August

“The pea harvest was a disaster to spectacular,” he added, pointing out that yields ranged from 20 to 60 bushels per acre.

Another factor affecting Ontario’s organic harvest was a stretch of hot weather that struck at the end of June.

“The late planted peas were hit when they were flowering. Early planted peas were done flowering by then,” Wehrmann said, adding there were also instances of pod abortion due to the conditions.

On the Canadian Prairies, most organic crops were still in their fields.

“We haven’t had anybody take anything off, but I talked with a guy…and he’s planning to start on his oats [on Aug. 26.] That will be the first organic crop harvest we’ve seen,” said Scott Shiels of Grain Millers Canada in Yorkton, Sask.

“Fingers crossed that it’s good quality because we’ve seen a bunch of conventional stuff coming off that’s light and that’s concerning,” Shiels explained. “That hot, dry July really didn’t do much for the crops.

He said some of the conventional grain he’s seen ranges from being quite good to product that Grain Millers can’t use.

“But it’s still early. Fingers cross it’s going to get better,” Shiels hoped.

Some 330 kilometers to the southwest of Shiels in Mossbank, Jason Breault of RW Organics said there has been some combining of organic hard red spring wheat.

“We’ve seen some samples. Yield was hurt from the heat. The quality actually looks OK for the ones we have seen so far,” Breault commented.

Another issue has put something of a dampener on organic grains has been the work stoppages at Canadian National Railway and at Canadian Pacific Kansas City. The railways locked out approximately 9,300 members of the Teamsters Canada Rail Conference on Aug. 22, which halted traffic at both railways simultaneously for the first time since 1987.

The Canada Industrial Relations Board imposed binding arbitration at the behest of the federal labour minister, which saw rail service resume. However it might be a few weeks or longer before traffic returns to normal.

Breault said RW Organics hasn’t been impacted very much.

“We use trucks as well as railcars. We had no railcars planned,” he said.

For Grain Millers, the labour dispute had a much greater impact.

“We ship a lot of organic oats out of northern Alberta by rail,” transporting it to the company’s facilities in the United States and to Yorkton, Shiels explained.

“We got lots of grain bought, but that cost now to us, getting the product where it needs to be, so we can keep things flowing through that elevator, it’s going to be up,” he stated.

He added that Grain Millers will make use of trucks to help keep some of their grain moving.

As for prices, Shiels pointed out the organic grain market has been stable while the conventional side has been pressured largely by the evolving harvest. On the other hand, Breault said organic hard red spring wheat has been feeling pressure from the harvest. For Ontario, Wehrmann said there have been more contracts being made available.