Photo: BryceMeyer
CROPDATAREPORTINGPROJECT
OFFICIALLYANNOUNCED
grain companies. To protect sensitive
commercial information, pricing won’t
be made available on an individual basis,
Crawford said.
“The idea would be to normalize those
prices into common grades and qualities,
to create averages over areas and zones
rather than individual locations,” he said.
The ultimate goal for the project is
that it would be self-sustaining, through
subscription and advertising.
The project is estimated to take 18
months. Once complete, it will likely go to
public tender for a third party to operate,
according to John De Pape, FARMCo
president.
“This is meant to provide a resource not
just to farmers, but also people who work
with farmers,” he said.
Gerry Ritz announces innovative programallowing grain farmers to receive up-to-date grain prices.
Spring
2015
grainswest.com
11
A PRICE TRANSPARENCY
initiative meant to provide accurate
and timely data for the Canadian grain
market is o cially underway, following an
announcement at FarmTech Jan. 28 by Ag-
riculture and Agri-Food Canada (AAFC)
Minister Gerry Ritz.
The tool, dubbed Price & Data Quotes
(PDQ), will provide daily information on
cash grain prices, as well as data on grain
movement and trade (
).
The project was developed by the Alber-
ta Wheat Commission (AWC) and will be
led by grain marketing consultant agency
FARMCo. Up to $743,000 in project funds
will come from AAFC’s AgriRisk Initia-
tives program.
“We saw this project as an opportunity
to take a leadership role in improving price
transparency in grain markets in Cana-
da,” said Kent Erickson, AWC chairman.
“We see the PDQ project as strategic and
necessary for farmers to compete on the
international stage.”
PDQ is meant to fill the information
gap farmers and grain companies face
now that the Canadian Wheat Board is
no longer the single marketer for western
Canadian grain. Unlike U.S. farmers,
who have had to market their grain as
basis traders for decades, Canadian grain
farmers have only had a few years to learn
about their new marketing opportunities.
Also unlike the U.S., Canada does
not have a regularly updated source of
price benchmark information for its own
farmers.
Most of the data that stakeholders need
is already out there, but it’s scattered and
often out of date, said Russ Crawford,
FARMCo vice-president.
“Price information is only good if it’s
current,” Crawford said. “If you’re mar-
keting something, you need to know what
the price is right now. And if the prices
that you’re seeing in the marketplace are
two to three weeks old, they’re basically
irrelevant for that purpose.”
Apart from data collected from organ-
izations like Statistics Canada and the
Canadian Grain Commission, the project
will depend on voluntary disclosure by
issues, said Cam Dahl, president of Ce-
reals Canada. Each unit costs around
$350,000.
The units can run remotely and con-
tinuously, but at three tonnes per hour,
scale of output may still be a problem.
However, Dahl said all technology
starts that way, and costs are eventually
driven down.
Newkirk thinks there could be imme-
diate use for the TriQ in Canada.
“I can see this going into seed-clean-
ing plants right away,” he said. “It’s a
significant financial investment, but the
math works.”
Scott echoed Newkirk’s optimism.
“It’s starting to make grain an indi-
vidual kernel commodity. And we’ve
never, ever viewed grain as that before,”
he said.
“Now you should be able to take any
source of grain and develop it and pro-
duce very distinct fractions for di erent
use, consistently.”
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