Just like a lot of Canadians hoarded toilet paper at the beginning of the pandemic, now many countries are hoarding shipments of grain and pulse crops and that's certainly good news for prairie farmers.
The Agriculture Transport Coalition says CN and CP Rail supplied a combined 98 percent of hopper cars ordered during shipping week 41. This comes on the heels of record wheat shipments during the previous week. Cam Dahl, President of Cereals Canada provides the details on what is occurring. "We are seeing a strong demand in international markets. Part of that is due to countries concerned about security of food supply during the pandemic. We're also did see strong deliveries into the country elevator system, just before spring planting started, so there was lots of supply available to ship. Then, of course, there is lots of rail capacity right now because of the pandemic. We are not seeing movement in consumer goods, we're not seeing movement in containers or automobiles. The railways have a lot of capacity to move grain." Dahl says the grain transportation system is performing very well during the COVID-19 pandemic.
Back in April both Canadian Pacific (CP) and Canadian National (CN) moved over 5.6 million tonnes of grain, which broke records for CP and exceeded the three year average for CN..
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