To better serve farmers who have feed wheat to market, the CWB has created a new pricing option.
“Wet weather throughout the growing season means more feed wheat in the bins than there has been in at least six years. This has created a difficult situation for many farmers,” said Ian White, CWB president and CEO. “As much as a quarter of all wheat harvested this year could grade as feed.”
The new pricing program, gives farmers the choice of immediately locking in prices for Canada Western feed wheat. It uses the CWB’s Early Payment Option in a new way, as a means of striving for the highest returns for feed wheat from the current market environment.
“Farmers tell us they’d like to lock in a feed wheat price this year, so we’ve adapted an existing program to enable them to do that,” White said. “Farmers can now choose the feed-wheat price that suits them best, taking into account their market view and cash flow needs.”
In an average year, over 70 per cent of Prairie spring wheat is in the top two grades. This year, only 38 per cent is expected to grade Nos. 1 or 2, leaving about 35 per cent as No. 3 and 25 per cent as feed. Not since the cold summer and wet harvest of 2004 has the CWB expected such a high volume of feed wheat.
Farmers can learn more about the feed-wheat pricing program at www.cwb.ca/epo.
