Perfect Storm for Grain Producers

One sector that has shown immunity to the COVID pandemic is crop production as demand for food is unchanged and our ability to get crops to market improved.

New figures from the federal government show farm incomes were up sharply last year – rising 18 percent or $2.6 billion over the previous year in Saskatchewan. That was the strongest performance delivered by any province. It also pushed us ahead of Ontario, topping the list for total revenues with $16.6 billion.

The feds noted that a key factor in the improvement was our ability to get product to market at a time when the world was buying. The pandemic reduced some types of traffic on railways which cleared the way for increased deliveries of crops.

Lentil sales, for example, doubled with fresh added demand coming from India and Turkey.  Canola revenues also increased as exports rose 40-percent and wheat exports went up too with China and Italy becoming bigger customers of our output.