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6 FROM PAGE ONE SNOWFAKE STORM – AFTERMATH Above left: The hailstorm that hit the Snowflake area July 4 destroyed many crops, including this field of canola. Above right: It’s no wonder hail is called the big white combine. There’s nothing left of this Snowflake area canola crop hit by a hail and wind storm July 4. PHOTOS: ALLAN DAWSON Severe weather hit much of southwest and south-central Manitoba July 4. The Snowflake area was hard hit by hail and high winds at around 6:30 A.M. and then again around 8:00 A.M. This photo (above) taken at Double Diamond’s facility near Snowflake at 8:00 A.M. shows the rain blowing over the shed roof. Many beautiful crops were completely destroyed. Some grain bins were wrecked and many tress were toppled and stripped of their leaves. PHOTO: RYAN YOUNG EvEryonE is invitEd to WAdo’s 8 th AnnuAl Ag rEsEArch FiEld dAy FridAy – July 20 th At thE nEW WAdo hEAdquArtErs Just WEst oF thE John dEErE dEAlErship on highWAy #3 in MElitA, MB. Be there at 12 Noon sharp for the Grand Opening Celebration of WADO’s new research facility in Melita, featuring our Minister of Agriculture, Food, and Rural Initiatives Ron Kostyshyn. BBq lunch to FolloW Research plot tour to begin at 1 pm – highlighting the latest canola varieties, cereal crops, soybeans, corn research, hemp research, winter wheat varieties and agronomy, intercropping research, special crops, cover crops, Ethiopian Mustard, forage restoration, and much more. We can confidently say that things look much better than last year, so we hope you can join us. contact: scott day – 204-534-7633 or scott chalmers 204-522-5015 for more information. The storm that roared through the Snowflake area July 4 destroyed crops, grain bins and shelter belts, including these trees at Arnie and Carol Falk’s. PHOTO: ALLAN DAWSON Hail July 4 turned this field east of Snowflake into soybean sticks. The storm also destroyed this field of wheat (above right) and many grain bins. PHOTO: ALLAN DAWSON The Manitoba Co-operator | July 12, 2012 OPEN MARKET Continued from page 1 Dakota State University. Grain companies typically use the basis — the difference between the cash and futures price — to encourage or discourage deliveries, he said. Usually the basis is widest, resulting in a lower price to the farmer, at harvest time when elevator companies are flooded with grain, he said. They are the narrowest in the middle of winter when deliveries are reduced. Since 2007, world grain markets have become much more volatile and so has the fluctuation in basis, Olson said. Before 2007, the wheat basis in North Dakota ranged from 30 cents a bushel under the futures price to 10 cents over for a 40-cent spread. Now the spread can be as much as $3. Being able to store grain when the basis is wide is one of the simplest ways of dealing with the risk, he said. “In the last few years the market has paid you substantial rewards for being careful about watching that spread in the cash and futures,” Olson said. Some of the grain contracts in the U.S. give the buyer the right to determine when the grain is delivered. “Storage will be king.” VAUGHN CONE “You don’t deliver when you want to — you deliver whenever the buyer wants it,” he said. “And that could be two weeks from now or two months from now. It could be 12 months from now.” Using futures and options markets is another way to offset price risk, but it’s important to know the difference between hedging (locking in a grain price) and speculating (gambling prices will go a certain direction), Olson said. The Minneapolis wheat futures market matches most closely the type of wheat grown in Western Canada, he said. There’s not enough trading on ICE Future’s Winnipeg market, he said. An open market is a big change for Western Canadian farmers, said Dan Hawkins of FarmLink Marketing Solutions. “We’ll have to be patient for markets,” he said. Sometimes buyers will want a No. 3 wheat, not a No. 1 and vice versa. “We have to sell into the strengths when the strengths come,” he said. It’s going to be different for grain buyers, too. “I had one buyer tell me that his trading area would triple in size because instead of knowing just what durum and wheat samples were in a 50-mile radius of his elevator he now needed to know within a hundred miles,” Hawkins said. allan@fbcpublishing.com
The Manitoba Co-operator | July 12, 2012 7 FLOOD WOES Continued from page 1 Association held a joint press conference in the farm workshop of AVPA chair Stan Cochrane that was attended by about 30 farmers. KAP president Doug Chorney estimated that as many as 40,000 acres of crops worth $16 million along the Assiniboine, all the way from Lake of the Prairies to Brandon, is underwater due to mishandling of outflows from Shellmouth dam by provincial officials earlier this spring. “The producers in the valley that have been flooded out repeatedly cannot bear the burden and costs when decisions are made poorly,” said Chorney. Cochrane took issue with the province’s insistence that the decision earlier this spring to store water behind the dam 1.5 feet above normal summer levels was the result of a consensus agreement by all downstream stakeholders that belong to the Shellmouth regulation liaison committee. “The Assiniboine valley producers never, at any time, told them that they should be closing the conduit,” he said, adding that due to high water tables, the group had in fact demanded that the level be drawn down ahead of spring rains. Instead, the province repeated the same mistake made in 2010, when outflows from the reservoir were curbed for almost two months, until heavy rains further up the Assiniboine watershed sent water pouring over the spillway unchecked. He added that so long as the Shellmouth Dam Act’s provision for 100 per cent compensation in cases of man-made flooding “left on a shelf,” redress for this spring’s blunder is unlikely. Keith Pearn, who farms 2,000 acres upstream near Virden, said Manitoba Water Stewardship e x e c u t i ve d i re c t o r St e ve Topping’s told producer representatives on the committee that lowering the reservoir level “was not an option” because his staff were predicting a drought. “He chose to do what he did. It’s all his fault,” added Cochrane. “He can’t blame it on us.” A spokesman for the province said three weeks ago that Topping was travelling and couldn’t be reached by phone. Last week, the spokesperson said he was away on holiday. On May 28, officials were predicting only a 10 per cent chance that outflows would exceed 1,700 cfs, even though they knew May rainfalls were already well above normal. In the end, control of outflows was lost when water started coming over the spillway. “Now, with outflows at over 8,000 cfs, you can see the results,” added Pearn. “This is not a natural flood. The government chose to save water, and when they can’t hold it all in Shellmouth, they are using all of our land from Brandon to Shellmouth as their second reservoir.” Millwood-area rancher Cliff Trinder, who has studied the issue extensively after being flooded out over a dozen times since 2005, said that provincial officials are unaware of the changed dynamics of the watershed due to widespread drainage. The Upper Assiniboine watershed, which covers about five million acres of north-central Saskatchewan pothole country, Oak Lake-area farmer Leigh Smith stands next to his once promising field of flowering canola that now lies rotting under Assiniboine floodwaters. photo: Daniel Winters traditionally contributed only about three per cent of total flows on the Assiniboine. “Now, the precipitation coming down is about three times normal levels because of the drainage situation up there,” said Trinder. This is noT a Case ih sTeiger QuadTraC. It’s raw power in its purest form. It’s reliability painted too-much-time-in-the-sun red, and it only knows how to make hard work a little easier. It’s a powerful beast that’s always tough enough to get the job done, but never tough on fuel. No, this is not a tractor. It’s a provider. For you, yours and the rest of the planet. And you can get one from us. Introducing the new Rocky Mountain Equipment. dePendaBLe is WhaT We do. TAXI Canada InC CLIENT Rocky Mountain Equipment CREATED June 18/2012 RMD121006AB_4_ManitobaC_Tractor.indd TRIM 8.125" x 10" CREATIVE filipe ACCOUNT Andrea LIVE MAC ARTIST yw PRODUCER leah f (ext. 238) The provincial spokesman said that April-to-June saw more than 200 mm of rain fall in the watershed area, and even with FROM PAGE ONE APPROVALS ARt diREctoR/dEsignER: wRitER MAc ARtist a lower drawdown of the reservoir, flooding would still have occurred. He added that the province will assess the issue of compensation. But Trinder accused provincial officials of cherry picking rainfall statistics from a monitoring station at Pelly, Sask., where a six-inch downpour fell, instead of presenting an average for the whole watershed. “Three miles down the road they had a quarter inch,” he said. On June 9, Trinder asked provincial experts to model what would have happened if the 40-foot-deep reservoir had been lowered to 1,386 feet above sea level, and outflows kept at a constant 1,500 cfs, instead of the 1,403.5 target – just five feet below the spillway level of 1,408.5 – set this spring. Officials responded to his request by saying they “didn’t have time to do it,” said Trinder. daniel.winters@fbcpublishing.com
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