Wheat Growers and NFU Call on Minister MacAuley to Halt CGC Move to Impose Export Grading Standards on Country Elevator Deliveries

Jul 28, 2023

Today, the National Farmers Union (NFU) and the Wheat Growers Association (WGA) sent a joint letter to federal Agriculture Minister Lawrence MacAuley asking him to halt the Canadian Grain Commission (CGC) decision to impose export grade standards on wheat delivered to country elevators. The new rule will have a massive and long-term negative impact on prairie wheat farmers’ incomes. Calling this a heavy-handed move, both organizations demand the change be stopped, at least until the full impacts on all stakeholders are presented to the CGC’s Western Standards Committee.

The NFU and WGA disagree on many policy matters but are united in their opposition to the decision to harmonize of primary and export standards for wheat.

In spite of opposition from virtually all the farmers on the CGC’s Western Standards Committee, the CGC has decided to ‘harmonize’ primary and export standards for wheat as of August 1, 2023. The Western Standards Committee includes members of both the NFU and the WGA.

“When a farmer brings their grain to the elevator, there are several different measurements taken in order to grade it,” explained the NFU’s Glenn Tait, who sits on the Western Standards Committee. “These measurements include bushel weight, number of wheat kernels of other classes, total foreign material, and so on. Grades reflect quality, and largely determine the prices paid to farmers. Grades are regulated by the CGC to uphold Canada’s grain quality standards in export markets.”

“Farmers across the prairies will soon be harvesting wheat that under the current rules would be graded as #1, but as of August 1, 2023 they will be forced to sell it at lower prices as a #2 instead, if the changes set by the Canadian Grain Commission (CGC) come into effect as planned,” explained Daryl Fransoo, WGA Chair.

The new harmonized test weight standard means that CWRS wheat (hard red spring wheat used for baking bread) must weigh at least 63.3 lbs/bushel when delivered to the elevator instead of the current standard of 60.1 lbs/bushel or it will be downgraded to a #2.

Currently, the benchmarks for country elevator grades are slightly lower than the official export grades for bulk wheat when it is loaded onto ships.

“Due to variations in growing conditions, and thus for wheat crop quality across the prairies, loads that grade #1 under current rules often exceed the minimum standards, allowing grain companies to blend country deliveries to ensure the export standard is met when they assemble shipments at their port terminals,” noted Terry Boehm, former NFU President. “The new CGC grade standard change will take money from farmers pockets.”

The CGC is adamant about their move to “harmonize” country elevator and export grading standards, but has been unable to provide historic cost-benefit analysis on the impacts of this change on either the producer or the grain handlers.

“We are particularly concerned with the Chief Commissioner’s remarks stating that the Western Standards Committee’s input is not binding on the CGC, and there was no indication that there would be any further review of the serious and legitimate concerns raised by producer representatives,” added Fransoo.

Producer members of the Western Standards Committee are active farmers who take time away from their operations to provide their insight on behalf of prairie farmers. It is not acceptable for the Committee to be used, as it appears in this case, as a means to rubber stamp a decision already made by the CGC.

Both the NFU and the WGA urge Minister MacAuley to put a halt to the impending grade standard change immediately.

Click here to see more...

Video: Can Gene Editing Give Seeds a Stronger Start?

Reagan Reed has a way of describing his research that might make a plant breeder pause.

“I’m the sort of person who likes to break things to understand them,” he says.

What he breaks are genes involved in seed germination. Reed, a Ph.D. candidate at the University of California, Davis, is investigating whether changing those genes can help seeds establish healthy plants under a wider range of conditions.

Reed recently attended the National Association for Plant Breeding meeting in College Station, Texas, as an NAPB Borlaug Scholar. His work speaks to a question that matters well beyond a research lab: what does it take for a seed to get a crop off to a strong start?

A seed that germinates quickly, alongside the others planted with it, spends less time vulnerable to stresses before seedlings become established.

“If you’re able to bridge that gap between germination to stand establishment, then that’s going to give you the highest probability of having a solid yield that year,” Reed says. “There’s a bunch that can go wrong after that, but it maximises your yield from the start, at least.”

Reed works in Dr. Imtiyaz Khanday’s lab at UC Davis, where his research focuses on seed quality in tomatoes and potatoes. He brings an unusual academic background to the work: at Skidmore College, he studied both biology and Latin.

Reed believes that combination prepared him for research. Translating an ancient text means studying each word, weighing its possible meanings and using context to reach the best interpretation. There is rarely a way to know with complete certainty what an author intended. Science, he says, requires a similar willingness to work through uncertainty.

“Attention to detail and comfortability working with uncertainty,” is how he sums up what Latin taught him.

In the lab, uncertainty can produce a surprise. Reed describes changing one gene and seeing little effect. Changing a second gene also appears to do little. Put both changes in the same genetic background, though, and the result can be substantial.

“I break this gene, nothing really happens. I break this other gene, nothing really happens. I combine them into the same genetic background, and now there’s a massive effect,” he says.

Those interactions matter as researchers gain the ability to edit multiple genes at once. They also complicate any simple account of how a trait works: improving a seed may depend on understanding what several genes do together.

For Reed, the question is whether that knowledge could help seeds germinate reliably when conditions are difficult. Some of the genes he studies prevent germination under certain conditions. That response may serve a plant well in one setting while limiting its usefulness in agriculture. He wants to learn what happens when those genes are changed, and whether the result improves establishment.

Yet a discovery that works in a lab still has a long way to travel before it reaches a field. Reed argues that agricultural biotechnology faces an economic challenge as well as a scientific one. New tools can create value for farmers, he says, but developing them requires a way to support the work in an industry where margins can be thin.

His fellowship with Flagship Pioneering gave him a view across AI, agriculture-related work and human health research. It also reinforced the importance of bringing people with different expertise into the same conversation—a benefit of gatherings such as the NAPB meeting.

“You need to have a team of people with different backgrounds who are willing to work together and approach the same problem in different perspectives and different ways,” he says.

That thinking connects the different parts of Reed’s path. Latin taught him to examine details without expecting a perfect answer. Gene editing lets him test what individual genes do—and what happens when their effects combine. Working with people beyond his own field helps him ask what those findings could become.

He came to agriculture because of its reach: the possibility that work by a small group of researchers could eventually make a difference on a much larger scale. His immediate focus is smaller and more precise. He wants to understand what helps a seed get through its first days and become a healthy plant.