How much financial trouble can you get into in 30 days? Depending on the situation, the answer could be “a lot.”
That’s one of the major issues the Agricultural Producers Association of Saskatchewan’s president Ian Boxall points out regarding the Canadian Grain Commission’s Safeguard for Grain Farmers program.
Boxall says the 30 day reporting period of the program, which requires licensed companies to put up security against grain purchased from farmers, is too wide a window to ensure pay outs to farmers in the event of a failure. He adds that the uncertainty of getting paid takes a mental toll on farmers and strains financial resources. Personally, Boxall is owed $159,000 by one of four companies that had their licenses revoked in 2024.
In the long term, Boxall is concerned about crop rotation diversity, too, when it seems to be riskier to market smaller acreage crops, such as oats, flax, or pulses.
A change to the policies that govern the CGC would be addressed in the Grain Act, which has been reviewed but has not yet been brought forward in parliament, something APAS is pushing for in the next sitting.
In the last 40 years, the CGC has dealt with 29 company failures. Payments to producers were made for 100 per cent of liabilities in 22 out of 29 failures, says a spokesperson. This week, the CGC pulled the licences of Purely Canada Foods, the fourth company (operating largely in Saskatchewan) to have licenses revoked in 2024. In the instance of Zegher’s Seeds, one of those four, the CGC paid out $1.2 million to farmers, covering all claims submitted.
