Improving market transparency is a key issue for farmers and has been a longstanding focus of Sask Wheat.
At Sask Wheat’s 2021 Annual General Meeting, a resolution was passed calling on Sask Wheat to work with other commissions and advocate for the establishment of an export sales reporting program to add valuable knowledge and aid producers in their marketing decisions.
The Mercantile Report provides a comprehensive overview on data gaps in grain markets and the solutions required to put producers on an equal footing when planning their cropping decisions and marketing their production.
Sask Wheat strongly believes that Canadian farmers need timely access to sales and export data, like the data available to American farmers through the longstanding USDA’s Export Sales Reporting Program.
Without available data on export sales, farmers are unable to accurately assess market dynamics and time their sales to improve profits. This puts farmers at a distinct competitive disadvantage to other players in the supply chain who already have much of this information available to them.
Although the CGC does currently report on exports from licensed facilities, this historic data does not represent current sales that are being made in the market and therefore, farmers are unable to use this data as a gauge for current demand.
As part of the Canada Grain Act review, Sask Wheat is calling on the CGC to create an export sales reporting program to put farmers on equal footing with other supply chain participants and enable farmers to make more informed marketing decisions.
This model would not disseminate individual company names or sale prices. As the U.S. has been running an export sales reporting program for almost 50 years, with no concerns around confidentiality, there is no reason why a similar export sales reporting program could not be implemented in Canada as well.
Source : saskwheat