Paul Martin's Business Update - March 25th, 2014

Paul Martin's Business Update - March 25th, 2014

Frustration over the slow movement of prairie grain seems justified, based on the way elevators accepted commodities in February.

This is one of those obscure things that StatsCanada tracks on a monthly basis and, frankly, it’s not too often that they warrant a closer look. But the recent action by Ottawa to get the railways to improve their shipments to port position on the heels of a highly effective lobby by Prairie producers makes this particular statistic a bit more insightful.

Now this stat is not tracking the railways’ performance directly, rather it is looking at the volumes of grain moving to elevators. And it was down virtually across the board in February. Only flax saw more movement than January.

Granted February is a shorter month – there are 10 per cent fewer delivery days than in January – but even that does not account for the across-the-board drop which was more like 30 per cent. Total deliveries to Saskatchewan elevators in January totalled nearly two million tonnes while February fell back to just 1.5 million.

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