Ongoing optimism among Prairie farmers, buoyed by strong grain prices, is being challenged by serious concerns about the effect of this year’s weather on crops.
The CWB’s 2009 producer survey shows 60 per cent of farmers continue to believe that agriculture is headed in the right direction. The upbeat results are similar to last year’s survey, conducted when grain prices had reached all-time highs. While prices have since fallen off, wheat returns for 2008-09 will be the second-highest in history.
However, weather has emerged as a serious concern in this year’s survey, with one in four farmers citing this as their biggest challenge when the survey was fielded in late April. Conditions have since grown more severe, with western Canadian production predicted to drop by 20 per cent this year.
“We grow food for the world, which means our product will remain in high demand – even in the midst of a global economic recession,” said CWB chair Larry Hill, who grows grain and pulse crops near Swift Current. “However, in the short term, most of us face major weather worries: too dry in the west, too wet in the east and a cold spring everywhere.”
The cost of inputs such as fertilizer, fuel and pesticides continue to be the top farmer concern by far, with 52 per cent listing this as their biggest problem this year, above grain prices (the top concern for 36 per cent) and weather concerns. Yet worry over input costs is down markedly from last year, when 66 per cent considered them a major challenge and the year before, when 72 per cent listed these costs as a major problem.
Other issues – including those surrounding the CWB – are far less pressing to most farmers, with grain marketing cited as a top challenge by 12 per cent of respondents, while farm labour and CWB issues were named as the biggest problem by two per cent of producers.
“As farmers, we are most concerned with the issues that affect our day-to-day business and our bottom lines,” Hill said. “This is where the focus must lie for policymakers – whether those of us around the CWB board table or government legislators at all levels.”
The survey also shows that farmers increasingly feel a sense of ownership of the CWB. Eighty-three per cent said they believed the CWB is run by its board of directors, not by the federal government. This compares to 74 per cent last year and only 57 per cent in 2000, the year after sweeping changes were made to the CWB – including creation of a mostly farmer-elected board to oversee CWB operations.
Seventy-two per cent agreed that the CWB is farmer-controlled, while 61 per cent said they feel as though they are one of the owners.
“We conduct this survey to gauge how all farmers view the marketing organization that they elect us to run, so this trend is encouraging,” Hill said. “Our goal is to achieve 100-per-cent awareness that farmers are in charge.”
General support for the CWB among farmers is up six percentage points from last year, with 71 per cent indicating they support the CWB (46 per cent “strongly”), while a similar number said the views of the CWB were “very close” or “somewhat close” to their own.
The survey was conducted among 1,300 producers in the three Prairie provinces. Results have been posted at www.cwb.ca/public/en/farmers/surveys/producer/.
